Instructions on dissolution
Some moments are only worth fearing
because no one has told you what they’re like.
No one has come from the dentist chair of death
to assure you that with what they have in the side-table
nowadays, it’s barely painful at all.
Just a quick shudder in the cheek
and patience—well that’s the hard part.
But let me assure you—
and here I give advice that won’t offend even the most conservative
member of your family circle—
Whatever you are going in, you won’t be again,
it’s mostly better
but don’t take my word for it.
Tim Duffy is a writer and teacher working in New York City and Connecticut. He has poems in The Cortland Review, Bop Dead City, Open Letters Monthly, The Indianola Review, and elsewhere.
