I Left a Package

Steve Klepetar

carefully wrapped just outside your door.
Open it when you have time to breathe,
maybe when dawn has streaked the sky with pink
and purple tails or later when you fling curtains
open to streaming sun. I know your clever hands
will work tape and silver paper until you find
the little box of sand I gathered from secret beaches
hidden among jasper rocks and willows drooping
by the sea. Squeeze a pinch between forefinger and thumb,
flick it out into morning air. When golden  
steps rise toward the east, climb until you disappear
above clouds and words and city smoke.   
While you are gone, I will shiver in this December cold.
Then come back to me with your brilliant eyes fresh and wild
and we will cling together in the warmth of our familiar flesh.

Steve Klepetar teaches literature and writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. His latest collections include Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications), Blue Season (with Joseph Lisowski, mgv2>publishing), and My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press). An e-chapbook, Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, is forthcoming from Kind of a Hurricane Press.