He wants me to know
how close he can get, how soon
it all falls to loss
when the way he's holding
becomes unfamiliar
and vague, when days and days
up to now begin coming across
as only motion. And sometimes he feels
sure it's time to be done with it.
Then he says, but maybe I'm close,
maybe I've done it wrong
all along. And he wants
me to watch how he begins
with his hands
together. Am I taking it back
too far? The motion
he does then is perfect. Do you feel
that? And he looks
at the air, what he imagines
just happened. He forgets
for a few seconds
he is breathing.
Chris Young lives in Eugene, Oregon
where she works in sales and does a little tennis teaching on
weekends. Her poems have appeared online in Samsara Quarterly,
Stirring, and Taint Magazine, and in print in Wind.
