Lindsay L. O'Connor

Some days

Some days

Some days…

I go for a walk

Just to listen for the poetry

that surrounds me.

If I listen closely,

I hear the poetry

that you’re speaking.

I talked to a stranger

as we beheld together

a perfect cloudless blue sky—

even saw two butterflies,

though it’s winter.

Tell that to the maple

who’s showing off her blooms

doing just what she was made to do.

But back to me and you…

We had a fight the other day,

naming the ways that I have changed,

naming the wreckage

blocking the space

that’s grown between us.

I mean, can you believe us?

Something has died,

and that felt sad,

but then again,

when I look back,

maybe it was all just the chaff

carried upon the breeze

an exhale, a release.

If I get quiet

I can see a phoenix rising.

We are being reborn.

Maybe now we’re something more,

something more real than before…

Back to the stranger.

He said:

Wouldn’t that

Wouldn’t that

Wouldn’t that

be something?

If the world were

like it’s supposed to be,

If the world were as it should be.

Some day.

Ten turtles in a line

sunbathing in winter light

scare so easily

when I approach to take their photo.

I wanted a memento

of this perfect day,

but every perfect day

comes with an expiration.

I hear it in the wind:

someone jogs by,

and I breathe them in.

It’s like one shared breath.

Inhale life, exhale death.

I walk by the two dogs

who always stare me down

through the knothole in the fence

sounding the alarm of their defense.

I see my own guard dog in them,

just trying to do her job,

keeping me safe.

I call her Anxiety,

but I wonder who she would be

if she didn’t need to protect me?

Wouldn’t that

Wouldn’t that

Wouldn’t that

be something?

If the world were

like it’s supposed to be,

if the world were as it should be.

Some day.

Some day.

It just may,

some day.

Some day.