Give Us This Day Our Daily Worry

A woman fiddles with a radio dial and swerves
just enough to make ten children fatherless.

And for the rest of the week, I worry each time
you put on your silly red coat and go out

to return the videos or buy us a bag of tacos,
as though any second I’ll hear the sirens

of some impossible rescue across town,
maybe even feel that psychic pang of horror

we see in movies whenever a loved one dies.
I know it’s awful to write that I’ve been thinking

about a world that doesn’t have you in it,
though each time I panic and feel guilty for being

so morbid, you wander back into the coffee shop,
the bar, our apartment, and most especially

that corner of my brain where all the traffic
flows in your direction. So there’s no one

to complain when you show up late, all smiles,
and kick off your shoes like you own the place.

Michael Meyerhofer’s third book, Damnatio Memoriae, won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books) and Leaving
Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award). He has also published five chapbooks and is the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. He is also the author of a fantasy series, the first book forthcoming from Double Dragon Publishing in 2013. For more information, please visit troublewithhammers.com.