Smudge

Dreaming, I saw you as some sort of criminal.
An honest criminal, though, you were fighting for a good cause,
the sort that attracts what we call revolutionaries—
those people we admire and hate in alternation.

I remember you were caught, handcuffed and
tugged away. The seventh casualty had been slew
making you surrender to save lives.
I will tell you what shook me, though, made me

recoil from the dream, was your bowed head—
it was too apologetic and it seemed unlike you to surrender,
face the authorities and yield, turn away from your cause.
I will carry that with me, though.

From the clarity of dream to hasty smudge of life,
I will hold before me, as you presented your hands,
the reminder that there are times to say, enough,
toss the righteous gun into the river and yield.
__________________________________________________________

Mourning

Rain structures our days the way that,
before death, a friend’s illness consumes
thoughts and schedules.

It was different with you who went so quickly,
so unassumed— you were gone before
we knew there would be a loss.

Reversed, the storm was your death. Before
and after, the calm. In these days indoors,
warm air stuffed inside windows,

I feel your stopped breath in every flower,
wilting and dry, bent from stems like
women weeping in grief.
________________________________________________________

Indifference

You attempt to explain to me the numbness,
how although you expected it would be bad
the first time you saw death, felt blood on your hands,

the shortened breath of an older woman, or perhaps
a younger man, ill and dying, how although you
anticipated the worst emotions, nothing came.

I think now you would have been better
if you had felt pain, if you had allowed your mind
to sway and faint when someone’s body did, before you.

You should go back to that day, cold snow
unable to numb your feet, when you anticipated hurt.
You should allow it to come.

ennifer LeBlanc is currently pursuing a B.A. in English from Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts. Her book Coloring the Shadows (2009) won the Mary C. Bryan Women’s Studies Award for 2009, and she represented Regis College at the 2009 Greater Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Festival. She is an editor of Regis College’s literary journal, Hemetera, and her poetry has been published in Bolts of Silk, Oak Bend Review, and Up the Staircase, among others.