I start and I come up short of you.
So let it be enough if I say that today
the lake was a perfect lake and the sun slipped across
the perfection like Ichor on the surface and the sky drained
its warmest blue into its brightest gold into its soft-blurring amber and I pressed
my palm to the heart of the willow and learned another grateful lesson of leaning
towards life and the shell of a cicada fell to the ground and did not break but it looked so fragile
I took it home where everything is safe and whole and the evening wove itself through my body
in its gentle pattern.
And the whole time -
how can I tell you?
The whole time I only
thought about your hands.
So let it be enough if I say that today
the lake was a perfect lake and the sun slipped across
the perfection like Ichor on the surface and the sky drained
its warmest blue into its brightest gold into its soft-blurring amber and I pressed
my palm to the heart of the willow and learned another grateful lesson of leaning
towards life and the shell of a cicada fell to the ground and did not break but it looked so fragile
I took it home where everything is safe and whole and the evening wove itself through my body
in its gentle pattern.
And the whole time -
how can I tell you?
The whole time I only
thought about your hands.
Meredith Phipps is an undergraduate student at Barnard College. She bounces back and forth between Manhattan and northern Indiana. She is an experimental work and poetry editor for Wrongdoing Magazine. If you want to read her work (she's very flattered), check out her Twitter: @merzi1999.