On the Second Anniversary of His Passing
Stephen Ruffus
And so the dream begins in a car speeding
across the plains to an end, the sun resting
along the horizon. Here he waits to be born
on an early morning, the nickel of the moon
tacked low in the sky. Suddenly I see his shadow
barely lit on an empty street walking slowly
in my direction as though from a long absence.
Now he is in the hallway in the apartment
where I lived. On one end he is the man he was.
on the other is the child who favored dreams
to bedtime stories I would read him, their words
trespassing on the shifting landscape of my sleep.
It is the second anniversary of my son's death, and I am dreaming of him as both a child and an adult simultaneously. The images in the poem, particularly the one in which I see him in the hallway of the apartment where I grew up, are meant to reflect my ongoing struggle with his loss and my understanding of who he was.
STEPHEN RUFFUS is the author of a chapbook, In Lieu Of (Elk Press, 2024) and the manuscript The Afterlife, which was a finalist for the 2024 Louis Award sponsored by Concrete Wolf Press. His work has appeared in the Valparaiso Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, 3rd Wednesday, the American Journal of Poetry, The Shore, Poetica Review, JMWW, Emerge Literary Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, among others. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his work also received two awards in the Utah Original Writing Competition. Stephen was a founding poetry editor of Quarterly West. Originally from NYC, he still considers himself a New Yorker in many respects, and currently lives in Salt Lake City with his wife.