HANNAH FONTONES

Snakes Skin

It will pass.

There will come a day
where I don’t look for you.
Until that day comes, I seek you out in every form given.
I have heard your voice in every room, every song, every word.
I could picture the shape of your lips around any syllable. There is something
to be said for the number of times I’ve turned the radio on,
only to end up cutting it completely and basking in silence,
simply because I only listened for you in the music.

I’ve become wholly unaware
of the niceties of socialization,
of the facts that I must listen with my whole heart to others,
that I must nod politely and look my peers in the eyes as they speak,
that I must ask after their families and about the weather,
that I should appear interested in what they’re saying. Instead,
I am only mildly present; laughing along when I realize others are laughing,
reawakening back into my body when I am jostled by an elbow
or there is a question tilted in my direction,
when I hear my name called three times each.

And all because I look for you; I am only listening for you.
I wait for you in my peripheral,
ears honing in on the bark of your laughter across a table,
across an entire courtyard, wedged into another group of your own.
I am only interested in what you have to say; I only care to know you.

This is my fate, that I can only care for you.
I can grieve only for you, and search only for you.
If I cannot have love, I will have a warm body,
a separate vessel into which I can dig my dearest imaginings of you.
I can lay upon another man’s pillow and I will only dream
of you, and the slow lilt in your voice,
the pitch of your hair, the smell of powder on your skin,
the rose of your lips.

I know you nearest in the recesses of my imaginings,
the closest to biblical we could ever be.
I take upon that awful burden of creation just to know you in ways I never will,
and I dress you in your favorite blues and golds
and I reach for you.
I feel it in the way my body burns,
flames licking at my heels until it seizes me.
I hold behind my breastbone the words I so desperately want to breathe,
that I am missing you wholly and entirely,
without fail, without cause, even when you’re near.

And I know it will pass, one day, on a day maybe much like this one,
when I’m twiddling my thumbs and hearing the beat of the rain;
that one day I will forget to think of you.
I have fallen into bed hoping for this, wishing for this, that I will lose you;
there will come a day in which it is true, and then
I will crumble to the kitchen floor for a reason besides you, and
I’ll see the tile grout beneath me and wonder when it was that I last cleaned.