Eye contact becomes language
as lips disappear,
leaving only eyebrows
over pools of so-much-to-say
welling up on the inside.
Outside, the Earth breathes.
Outside, the hen still clucks
in the garden and today,
the way the sunlight bounced
off the green watering can,
her tiny fingers
and gaptoothed smile
as she ran splashing water
on unsuspecting feathers—
all this was almost too much
for you to take.
You nearly stopped breathing.
In your hand at that moment,
the phone felt impossibly small
as you waited your turn
with ten thousand others
to ask questions
for which there are no answers—
a hundred thousand digits
pressing digits until not enough
+ nothing left
= somehow we will survive.
You thought of Googling
how to butcher a chicken
but the phone called you back
and you forgot about
the watering-can sunlight
until later, standing in her doorway
in those ten minutes a day
for which you live,
you watched her chest rise and fall
and you felt a stirring
you’d not known since youth—
and you slipped outside
to gawk at the silent sky.
Outside (a poem)
