Postmarked Omen – Rosemary Dietz

Dear Deity,

            I keep having dreams of stepping 

on sidewalk cracks but you’re not my mother.

Ideally you would have a form, 

something contained

designed to hold but instead you are made

                        of superstition. Here, outside of the high gates, we invoke

your name and then unspeak it. Mocking lovers who don’t throw salt

over their shoulders

then guiding their hands through the motion.

You live in the blue all the porch ceilings are painted

to ward off ghosts or wasps depending on who’s telling

the story. Ideally, a form: holding tight to a blush mirror 

cat hair black on your good red shirt.

I can’t breathe by graveyards because of you.

Don’t you write back, not until after Friday. Sincerely,

sincerely, I mean it.