ALL NONDESCRIPT BARNS LOOK ALIKE
To the keen observer, we change
lanes like wild fauna, start wars
with adjacent cars and kiss them
in whatever imagined space suits.
We know this drive is final, but we
choose to ignore that plus barns and
noble reasons to give up on travel,
like, Hey we couldntve done THAT
Hugs last longer when one party
keeps the hug longer than the other,
stripping commonplace rights down
to a core only one person sees, center.
I held it, looked at the ground spurned,
decided to measure it emotionally. We
danced the dance of death-as-parting
to the tune of our respective car radios,
and every turn when I drove back
looked like you in macro-miniature,
highway-exit jawline for rides home—
then the poems and your anger, then
the first 2.2 stanzas are a lie. I had
threatened to kill myself, and he didn’t
want to see me off so quickly, so he
drove me crying and wringing hands,
First time for every thing you
come across on days I don’t
see myself as an offshoot of you
anymore/ the second nicest thing
you ever said to me was that it’s
easiest to cry in the shower if you’re
unable/ it’s hardest to forget when
the intensity of the memories
follows me around like I’m their
sacred keeper/ and I know now
that I needed what you had to say
more than vice versa’d forms of
whatever new meaning we/ fished
out the water of the Atlantic
as the Great Lakes called us back
but we’d lost the way littered with
car keys and rust/ why I give priority
to that weekend’s intensity is beyond me—
I liked the backs, the forths, the frothy
conversations/ manipulation places too high a
price on the head of the manipulated
and I only knew the power I had then later
when you told me you were in
a different place, and the place
sounded nicer, like a ducked-out
greener pasture I don’t need your
forgiveness; I’m trying to forgive myself
I’m trying to make the word lose meaning
as you drive me to a point you knew but
didn’t reveal yet, and my poems didn’t show,
and my life didn’t recognize yet, and me,
pre-hug: Thank you for holding.
Blake Wallin is the author of the poetry collections Otherwise Jesus (Ghost City Press), No Sign on the Island (Bottlecap Press), and Occipital Love (Ghost City Press); the novels Papal Glow and More Perfect; and two full-length plays. He attended the 2018 Virginia Quarterly Review Summer Workshop for poetry as well as the 2018 Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at George Mason University.