» Poetry

Grief Is a Sudden Room

Grief is a sudden room.
After flailing around, breaking
all the furniture inside it for years,
you can think you’ve shut
the ancient door behind you,
but the latch hasn’t worked for aeons,
it will just pop open anytime
you open a window, elsewhere
in your mind. No matter. The room
will arrange itself in your absence
and wait for your return.
You’ve never seen such patience.

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Margaret Ray

Margaret Ray (she/her) grew up in Gainesville, Florida. She is the author of Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic (2021, selected by Jericho Brown for the 2020 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Prize). A winner of the Third Coast Poetry Prize, and runner-up for both the James Hearst Poetry Prize (North American Review) and the december Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2021, Threepenny Review, Narrative, The Gettysburg Review, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches in New Jersey. www.margaretbray.com