Rare Moment

A clear choice

is so sweet. Not

reluctance but

real resistance.

Joy-to-bursting,

or none.

Grief,

not gradations.

Someone essential

and someone not.

A good, dark

strike-through

versus

weighing everything

at the end of each day.

Look, a cat killed a cardinal

on an emerald lawn.

For so many reasons

it shouldn't have been

beautiful.

But that's also

the kind of book

I like best.

Copyright Credit: Lia Purpura, "Rare Moment" from It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful. Copyright © 2015 by Lia Purpura. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Source: It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (Penguin Books, 2015)