Katie Hartsock

Tussive

When we cough, cough together in the night,

his hand finds mine and radiates like moss.

The nightlight radios another life,

flickering. Childhood is a construction site

and it will not hold without the nail that’s lost

when we cough, cough together in the night.

Does he want me to sing the Mary song? He might,

except my voice doesn’t sound like it usually does.

The nightlight radios a mother’s life.

Most villagers have quit for other shires—

the basement office, some realm beyond our raucous

cough, cough, coughing together in the night,

in the lonely chiaroscuro of flying kites

inside our chests, our hearths of sore throat fuzz.

The nightlight radios an ordered life,

but we are heroes crusted in carbonite,

or desert sheriffs testing our own laws.

When we cough, cough, together in the night,

the nightlight radios some other life.

Katie Hartsock's second poetry collection, Wolf Trees (Able Muse Press), was listed as one of Kirkus Review's Best Indie Books of 2023. Her work has recently appeared in Threepenny Review, Oxford Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, The New Criterion, Tupelo Quarterly, Image, and elsewhere. She teaches at Oakland University in Michigan.