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# Next Year
- URL: https://www.fsm.ink/next-year/
- Published: 2023-08-17T12:32:09.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-03T18:32:57.000Z
- Author: Staff
- Tags: Poetry, #Import 2026-08-03 09:59

*by Katie Chicquette*

I’m going to seed my lawn with soft, sweet clover—  
what’s left of it anyway, because next year I plan  
to steal my lawn back bit by bit from my lawnmower  
and British Petroleum and the epitaphs of my great-grandchildren; sorry lawn, you’re about to become hostas and clover and mulch, and no, I am not actually sorry at all.

Next year, I’m going to plant so many different kinds of basil right outside my door that my fears  
will choke on their spicy cloud of airy joy,  
and I will buy not a few but a whole shelf of the impatiens at Aldi marked down to $2 because the refrigerated truck got caught  
in a traffic jam outside Chicago, and they wilted  
in a way that tricks the uninitiated into thinking they are dead when they are just very, very thirsty. 

Next year I will paint a single wall dark teal and wonder if this is the right gold velvet to keep it company and I will not ask for anyone else’s opinion

I will spray paint old porch lights, and watercolor geometric shapes, and paint my name with a dollar store sparkler, even if I spend  
the 4th of July alone.

Next year, I’ll have to write new mental narratives for the noises in the night, because I’ll only  
be able to blame them on my children  
half the time. I’ll write grocery lists for meals I always meant to make that only suited me, I’ll grate fresh ginger and saute portabellas and as I cook I’ll sing at the top of my lungs instead of the bottom. I’ll write journal entries in invisible ink so I won’t be tempted to relive my mourning — or my indecision.

Next year, I’m sure I will still wear my sadness like a thick, heavy blanket, but next year,  
I will remember that’s all it is, and shrug  
it off. But because I am not some hardened, slovenly beast, I won’t just leave it there; I’ll pick it up, fold it with care, set it to the side—  
I won’t pretend my grief isn’t real, every tear-track a stitch in this long and lonely time. But  
what a relief it will be to know that I can sometimes set it to the side. To know that I didn’t need it  
as a shroud because I was dead—I was just very, very thirsty.

Katie teaches English in an alternative high school in Appleton, WI. Her poems appear in *Riggwelter, Torrid, Portage, WI People & Ideas, Brain Mill Press: Voices, Bramble*, and elsewhere; a few have contest nods or Pushcart nomination. Poetry appeared on her doorstep in her late 30s, huffing, “I’ve been chasing you since you were 19—thank God you finally stopped running!”