Year of the Rat, Full Moon in Aries, and Coltrane Plays

Andrea Blancas Beltran

Blues to You. I have folded
my sorrows like fitted
bedsheets: fraying elastic, the faint
scent of an ex-lover’s
detergent and my palms
holding the creases
against my skin, a way to live
into them. I have
folded. My sorrows don’t ask
for any precision
other than my hands
against their hands
mountains—
of holding
a mountain of folds smoothed out for the moon and
the impossible season Mars makes of it. Have I folded
my sorrows well enough into
               the weather of the darkest
               corner of a fading
               restaurant and the small
               talk caught in its walls? I have
folded my sorrows. I have. I have
forded the shallows dragging
my sheets
and their sweet un
-foldings into
another in
-tractable
year

Copyright © 2021 by Andrea Blancas Beltran. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 16, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.