Gray sky, empty page
I love the way he rocks back & forth
like an aspen tree with tilted arms
& hair flickering in the light as it dances
around the bow, bent in a song of driftwood
& waves & motion that cannot be
stopped but is always changing;
I love the space in her voice, the emptiness
between the lines, collapsing intervals
of sound & silence that make the world
seem contained, small & safe, walls within
walls which hold my frail body close
& separate from the sky with all its vast
nothingness that reminds me of my own.
I love the color of his eyes, a wash of metal
& rain & damp like old mirrors left
in former hotel rooms holding the colors
of the summer when they cracked, so much
beauty there where hope wasn't, spending
the afternoon mourning a stranger’s long-ago
death while friends cooked hot dogs
on a dirty Los Angeles windowsill.
For all this feeling, I sometimes wish I could feel
anything else, unrooted from this internal eternity,
longing for change & separateness & lost causes,
anxious leviathans built to patrol the ocean
that swept in between the world & me, all
while I was daydreaming, wishing I could feel
as satisfied within another set of arms as
I am when building with my own;
Ever unsure if it’s touch itself that chills me
or the sea & the sky & pet monsters
that call the gales down whenever I start to feel warm. LE Francis is a writer from Washington State. Find her online at nocturnical.com.