Poetry by Elizabeth Mercurio

        Thomas CC



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When your world grows smaller,


remember to pack a sweater. 

Remember to hold yourself

—tight. Remember the last time,

how the feelings got better.

Remember winter oranges & night birds,

black swans on Lake Eola.

Remember how you survived, 

how you made it through. 

Remember the heavens opening,

the relentless downpour--

Remember how the weather changes.

Remember the flush from a lover,

the bright jewel of an orange hibiscus.

Remember disorder, chaos

that night you just slipped through.

Love is not a condition of being, 

it is life, coming and going, coming and going.

It’s all the poems they told you, 

you’d never write.

Remember apples & chocolate

and Emily Dickinson’s fresh baked bread.

She’s gone too, but not really,

you read her poems at a marathon reading

at the Library of Congress 

when you celebrated her birthday

with a bunch of strangers.

No one is there sometimes,

except the dead poets

and singers and their strange alchemy

forever helping the rest of us live.

Remind yourself, the weather changes.

The world moves on. People leave.

Also remember the clouds, 

how they weave pale pink light 

above the mobile home park,

even on the day your father dies. 

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Elizabeth Mercurio is the author of the chapbook Doll. She is an Assistant Editor at Lily Poetry Review and earned her MFA in poetry from the Solstice Program. Her poems have appeared in Third Point Press, Philadelphia Stories, The Literary Nest, Ample Remains, The Wild Word, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Thimble Magazine, and elsewhere. She was recently named a finalist in the Cordella Press Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize.