By Angela T. Carr,
So many things will sit inside a square –
a book, a bell, a tooth, a cup, a bone –
but who would look and think to find them there?
Who’d ink their shape in light when there was none?
I think about the square that is a house,
a room, where footsteps creak the wooden boards –
the one that’s empty of the two of us –
I’d name the sound if I could find a word.
Though you were never one to fit a tongue
or root equations as are graphed by hand –
you’d lay your shadow as your sun demands
and slip through pauses tighter than a drum.
My arms have learned to love the weight of air,
to circle what can’t linger in a square.
This poem was originally published in The Lonely Crowd Issue 10 (2018).