I forget where some of their fingers started, how softly
some of them ended. But I remember, in particular,
the fingers of one man. We tumbled in simmering grass
and he hooked all five behind my bottom teeth,
then further in, like he was trying to drag a lake.
Under the rustling sky of a Pennsylvania
I won’t see again, his shadow was much larger
than mine—wasn’t it? In the orchards, pale-green fruits
were starting to ripen, lush as petals. Lush as petals,
which is a way of saying easily pierced.
Love is not like water I can see the bottom of.
It’s a mountain’s crags I climb, searching for a vantage point.
I recall what I’ve let go slack in my palms, the way he bit
his lip, then mine, how in the best photographs
of horses, all of their legs hit the air at once.
The bark of a dog in the distance is a rusted door
as it closes. The gray of the sky outside becomes
the gray of the sky inside. I forget where some
of their fingers started, how softly some of them ended.
I light a cigarette and sip my tea. The smoke mingles with the steam.
Copyright © 2025 by Matthew Gellman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 22, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
