Jon Lemay’s restorative poem addresses the exact moment when one emerges from melancholy into a new frame of mind. Illustration by Jason Mowry.

Now is the time for mending,
the season I shed the dead

skin of old love,
so the heart can once again
become a living thing.

I have been made small in the wake
of winter; I feel feverish & weather-worn
by a particularly soggy spring.

But there is a wren that flutters
inside my chest, trilling
louder than the murmurs of love
that do not stay.

I feel the click of its beak
as it chips away at my sternum,
waiting

for the moment it breaks
through the bone
& hits the nerve that will send me

diving into the summer
with speed and delicacy

in search of new modes of destruction,
singing I have found a trajectory
that is my own.

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