December 21

December 21

Bethany Besteman

A coffee cup and missing shades beneath
the black umbrella’s bent bat wings. Depressed
and writhing tissue box: snarled, recessed
into the seat-floor gap. Cheerios teeth-
torn or hand tossed: a toddler’s back seat blessing.
Cursing, I clutch my cardigan. The wind
slivers. Six pm and dark as hell; hell pinned
in place: receipts and grocery lists, old dressing
packets, a parking ticket. All scraped, evacuate
this numbing night: void into void. Until
absence imputes a partial peace: the still
broken, still wrenched, still soon to be unmade
peace of a cloud-curtained starlight sky drawn
new in the coming, always coming dawn.

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Bethany Besteman
Poet & Worship Coordinator

Bethany has been published in Reformed Worship

Painting by Karl Pärsimägi