This was written a few weeks ago, while I was "listening" in one of my classes. I'm trying transition back into writing, particularly poetry.
*****
Your
clothing falls from your shoulders,
too
big, standing away
from
your body, stiffened by hanging
too
long in a closet,
but
I don’t see
the
planes of cloth
encasing
your torso
but
the hollowness underneath,
the
shadow tucked inside your collar,
the
curve of your spine, your ribs
expanding
inside the soft coolness
like
when we were young,
and
would make tents in the lilacs
with
crisp, old sheets
and
lie on the grass
together,
like a secret
world
all our own,
but
now you’re encased, so far
away,
inside cotton broadcloth—
a
door I can’t open, a fence
I
could not jump—
and
you feel like a wall
I’ve
pressed myself against.
