…So Why Start Now By Candice Kelsey

Do I look yellow? like jaundice yellow? I half-jokingly ask 

My husband sitting in the driver’s seat during half-time

Of our daughter’s soccer game. We came to charge

Our phones and get warm.

Look at my eyes carefully, I urge him. He is distracted

By the Michigan–Michigan State game on his phone, but

Manages to toss me a glance. I look back into the visor’s tiny

Mirror convinced I look sick.

I’ve been trying to drink myself to death, but it’s not

Working, I confess. He bitches about Fat Pat, who carelessly

Texts and that’s the game! before it comes through on a two

Minute internet delay.

The tall pine trees that thickened the edge of Fury’s Ferry Road

Have been bull-dozed. It’s a fifty-million-dollar project

To widen the road where we live. Orange barrels stand guard

Over newly exposed backyard fences.

There were so many trees just a month ago. Oh, some still

Lie there, waiting their turn to become dust as we just continue 

Learning new words— feller buncher, excavator mulcher, 

And bull hog attachment.

The smaller trees seem to watch, waiting for someone to offer

An answer. Or to help. As though they expect one of us to notice

And make it stop. As though they expected us to keep our end

Of some ecological deal.

Well, we don’t— at least not for them. Or for us either. Nature 

Realizes it’s on its own. And now that his game is over, I repeat 

I’ve been trying to drink myself to death. My husband smiles:

You’ve never been a quitter before...

CANDICE KELSEY teaches writing in the South. Her poetry appears in Poets Reading the News and Poet Lore among other journals, and her first collection, Still I am Pushing, explores mother-daughter relationships as well as toxic body messages. She won the 2019 Two Sisters Writing's Contest and was recently nominated for both a Best of the Net and a Pushcart. Find her at www.candicemkelseypoet.com