When I Think of the End

Written By Colby Cotton

I think of the silver rattle

of the jewelry box that held

the hooped turquoise

on our dresser, cherry necklaces,

topaz pendants, locks of blonde

hair in the shadowbox

above the mantle. I think of the brass

rings your father brought back

from Carcassonne, or Cassis,

where you could float

for years in the Aude,

you told me, and held there

a moment in the doorway

as you practiced French,

fumbling pronunciations

for plum and currant

while I sponged the baseboards.

Though the rooms are empty

now, I still remember the gold

coat of pollen over the walls

and the taste of bronze

when I looked up to see you

pinning an earring to your ear.

Colby Cotton’s debut collection, Steelhead, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in spring 2027. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, he is a graduate of the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, and Best New Poets, among others. Originally from upstate New York, he lives in Los Angeles.

Colby Cotton

Colby Cotton’s debut collection, Steelhead, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in spring 2027. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, he is a graduate of the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, and Best New Poets, among others. Originally from upstate New York, he lives in Los Angeles.

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