~ Joan Didion (December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021)

How I felt a cold shadow creak through me—klieg

lights suddenly flipped, a few mercury vapors streaking

noir effects, growing up in L.A. where I’d read

you, run into you at the tucked-away girls’ school

your daughter attended, a stone’s throw from lots

where talented Sharon Tate expired and Jim Morrison

fluttered psychedelic, fiery birds rising from the boulevard

of broken wings. Sometimes the calendar opens too early,

the advent candy, its hidden splendor, spoiling like

chocolate in the sun of disbelief, our soft mugs stamped

with bad news behind each sprung paper door parceled

down a page, each bittersweet morsel we’ve fed ourselves

to live, the un-swaddled mirror swallowed—darkly—

embraced. Each death, like yours, we’re summoned to face.