ISSUE: Spring/Summer 2023
The forest opens wide then closes once
I’m inside and looking up.
Blue traces the tree line’s nothing
above it. The question—Is the sky really
that color?—comes crashing in as it did
on a ledge below which a lake made
figure eights around rocks as I sat
next to someone who said I was not
his original idea of beauty, but something.
Something he couldn’t quite
put his hands on. Bare neck, shoulders,
legs, all static, all waiting for action
to be taken, as in rehearsing for a play
that opens with a weapon at rest
on the mantel. The gun represents
the fact that whatever’s on stage
must be used by the end of act three,
scene something. And yet, there we were.
Neither of us would ever see the other
again except in that film that never ends.
