Her

Easily this is the turn I’m accustomed to. The turn. Like an empty house. Like a girl I know and yet she’s a friend. Like I tell myself Be sensible. You can’t be great, I won’t mean good to her if I’m not sensible. As accidents that frustrate. A turn to see I don’t understand the turn. I thought I did. As situations become possible, and these possibilities fall like polite laughter. Artificial. Like denying myself again the hope that maybe she is attracted to me. Like taking furniture from bare rooms and fitting them into an empty truck. A turn away within myself to silence. Like fearing what would grow is glass. Like hardness, the death and truth of solid. Like hating to hope so. What would grow is windows is humility dangerously opened to the wind. is clumsy inability to be sure. not being able to explain, to hold onto the illusion that an open window is sensibly the same as no wall. to hold onto the wind, to bend with the wind, to breathe easily like gravity. Like air.

December 1971