Revoked

The bedroom windows are drowning
and no one else is in our bed
besides me,
facing the limp strand of hanging Christmas lights
retrieved from some box
long forgotten in a closet compartment
inside my mother’s rental unit.

It’s getting darker, and the lights
grow lurid against lurching shadows
in corners of the room.
Outside, a washed-out streetlamp
hums persistently in the company
of water sheets.

It’s comforting, really,                      up
to know                                          rise
these ephemeral streams  still
from time to time.

—N.A.