Heidi Seaborn
Accidie
I have lived a thousand days
like today the sluggish sky
dragging a finger through clouds.
So much silence—
each yellow door closing.
The bowl of fruit carefully
arranged so the apples don’t spoil
the bananas.
Clean dishrags creased
along the oven door
like white teeth.
I am no longer hungry.
Am overfed. Have fed the orchids
ice. When I shift away
from the sun, my faith cools.
If I stay here long enough. If I long
enough.
Heidi Seaborn reads “Accidie”
Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of the 2022 The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She is the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent work in Blackbird, Brevity, Copper Nickel, diode, Financial Times of London, Penn Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, The Slowdown and elsewhere. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU. heidiseabornpoet.com