Susan Cossette

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How long does this moment last?

Cold dust obscures hot hydrogen gas.

Black umbra, lead weight,

iron anomaly dangling from an invisible thread.

You mock me, burn the soul from my eyes.

I belong here no more than I belonged there.

My life compacted into a few family photos,

wedding crystal wrapped in tissue and packed in rubber bins.

A gravitational confinement only found in ancient stars.

You are in the shadow of the moon.

You know what you left behind.

You know you are alone.

You know what hell feels like.

Not fire, not heat,

just paralysis, blackness, the crackling gold corona,

and laughter in another room.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is also also a past recipient of the University of Connecticut's Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, New York Quarterly, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox... Full Profile