Winter Marmalade

Matthew D Albertson

When the days of midnight sun

Are past, a gnawing grows within—

A pit of need. Not for want of food

Or drink. No, it is the dark itself I yearn

To eat, grown in gloaming hours—

That of thy heart. Whene'er thy sorrows

Fruit like sour, violet crabapples, I

Lust to pluck them all from limb and

Ground. Those succulent woes, thy

Nighttime dread, to me is most

Preservative—

A nourishing, filling, decadent jam.

Oh, let me in thy late autumnal orchard,

Ripe with crop and tang and rot;

Let me gorge upon thy noxious crop

Of melancholia.

I thank thee;

And take sparingly,

Greedily;

Yet I’ve left a gift behind, still

Warm upon thy windowsill: a

Saccharine, cholic

Winter marmalade.