1555: I Don't Miss It | Tracy K. Smith
"I Don't Miss It"
Tracy K. Smith
But sometimes I forget where I am,
Imagine myself inside that life again.
Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,
Or more likely colorless light
Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.
And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,
The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke
Climbing the walls while the hours fall.
Straining against the noise of traffic, music,
Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.
And that scamper of feeling in my chest,
As if the day, the night, wherever it is
I am by then, has been only a whir
Of something other than waiting.
We hear so much about what love feels like.
Right now, today, with the rain outside,
And leaves that want as much as I do to believe
In May, in seasons that come when called,
It’s impossible not to want
To walk into the next room and let you
Run your hands down the sides of my legs,
Knowing perfectly well what they know.
On this day in...
2011: "Kansas" by B.H. Fairchild
2010: "Taste of Cherry" by Kara Candito
2009: "Haskell Avenue" by Virginia Tamez
2008: Weekend, no poem
2007: "To Whom It May Concern" by Adrian Mitchell
And you knew what would happen next. The snake/ready to strike, the bullet finding a body. Night./ The taste of cherry.
Tracy K. Smith
But sometimes I forget where I am,
Imagine myself inside that life again.
Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,
Or more likely colorless light
Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.
And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,
The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke
Climbing the walls while the hours fall.
Straining against the noise of traffic, music,
Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.
And that scamper of feeling in my chest,
As if the day, the night, wherever it is
I am by then, has been only a whir
Of something other than waiting.
We hear so much about what love feels like.
Right now, today, with the rain outside,
And leaves that want as much as I do to believe
In May, in seasons that come when called,
It’s impossible not to want
To walk into the next room and let you
Run your hands down the sides of my legs,
Knowing perfectly well what they know.
On this day in...
2011: "Kansas" by B.H. Fairchild
2010: "Taste of Cherry" by Kara Candito
2009: "Haskell Avenue" by Virginia Tamez
2008: Weekend, no poem
2007: "To Whom It May Concern" by Adrian Mitchell
And you knew what would happen next. The snake/ready to strike, the bullet finding a body. Night./ The taste of cherry.