This is when I’d like to see gravity happen.
To navigate the infinite. To push myself
blue-stained against glass, like you,
to see you above the trees in the park.
These boxes are for nesting. The city
is something I’d like to see again and again.
In the past there were blue cafeterias
and the patisserie, there were teenagers.
Now when you eat you are already gone
and the building is gone and I am surprised
at the number of curls in my hair.
When I have a baby I will be so warm
and the warmth will scare me
and I will move through the world like that.
No more summer to carry us.
There are too many choices and only
so many years to make them in.
Nothing will or can happen until I leave
from here, and I think you know that.
There’s no reason not to breathe.
There is no one we will touch.
Listen:
Gale Marie Thompson is the author of Soldier On (Tupelo Press, forthcoming) and the chapbooks Expeditions to the Polar Seas (Sixth Finch Books) and If You’re a Bear, I’m a Bear (H_NGM_N). Her work can be found in Best New Poets 2012, Sink Review, Denver Quarterly, Volt, Colorado Review, and others. She is creator and editor of Jellyfish Magazine and writes, teaches, and studies in Athens, GA.
