(OR HOW THE HOTEL LOBBY LOOKS LIKE A WORLD AND THE FACES A CONSTELLATION OF WAYS YOU HAVEN’T FUCKED UP BUT COULD)
From this distance they could be celebrating birth, death, the end of the black plague—the marble floor is bright flesh with blue veins so convincing you’d bend to kiss it if you weren’t clutching the wrist of distance itself. The body itself: more space than matter and the space between bodies a long-distance phone call. How you will go home tonight with ceiling plaster in your hair knowing that up close clouds have holes and how a hand doesn’t know emptiness until someone fills it. In the space between breaths I will call you: come down. It’s not that I’ve figured it out, how distance can feel like perspective, space between subject and object so safe it startles the livid heart, which pauses as often as it beats. Oh I’ve done it again, inserted myself into a party I’m no part of. I’m sorry but I just want to be the moment in which you happen, and the crystal teardrops between your knees, quivering—
From this distance they could be celebrating birth, death, the end of the black plague—the marble floor is bright flesh with blue veins so convincing you’d bend to kiss it if you weren’t clutching the wrist of distance itself. The body itself: more space than matter and the space between bodies a long-distance phone call. How you will go home tonight with ceiling plaster in your hair knowing that up close clouds have holes and how a hand doesn’t know emptiness until someone fills it. In the space between breaths I will call you: come down. It’s not that I’ve figured it out, how distance can feel like perspective, space between subject and object so safe it startles the livid heart, which pauses as often as it beats. Oh I’ve done it again, inserted myself into a party I’m no part of. I’m sorry but I just want to be the moment in which you happen, and the crystal teardrops between your knees, quivering—
Ashley Farmer
ashleymfarmer@gmail.com
Nox
Anne Carson