Photo by: Erin Conroy
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For the Lonely Boy Who Pretends He Doesn't Know
It wasn't that I had to readjust my legs; my cuffs
did not dig into the thin bone of ankle, my knees
were not weary from the bend and flex of their wings.
I did not sit on the outside accidentally knowing
you would be late and need space.
It's that I have captured you so often
in sleep that when I coast, you are waiting
on a broken bench in my head, reading the Times,
and when I breezed by you in the kitchen,
you caught my waist in your hands, and I awoke,
startled and obvious.
In the calm between your sentences,
the drawn out punctuation, I am lambasted
by the sudden bees in my ears, the sharks
in my belly and am unable to push you off
my tongue and onto sheets. I have made you
the lines in my notebook, the vague references.
And when it rains, I am haunted by your hands,
their seemingly circuitous track, their perfect canoe
of nail. How they slingshot back from my folded
feet, and fell in your lap to die.
-- Erin Elizabeth
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