Public Republic

Leigh Anne Hornfeldt

Photo: MinimalistPhotography101.com

– for N. –

Before you fled into whatever
firmament burgeoned beyond my door,
the weight of quiet kitchen not yet pressed
in your palm, that twilight infused
disappointment not yet felt

Before the night I cast you
from the end of a cue
to the concrete floor where you lay
bleeding from a gash in your chin,
a gasping smallmouth bass
whose tears rolled, landed
like stripped gills at my feet

There was a prologue in our unfinished
childhood when you clumsily pedaled
a Big Wheel in Kamikaze
loops and I steered a 10-speed
through tidy figure 8’s
and across all that was still
unknown to us I glared, mouthed
I hate you as clearly I could
bringing forth that rigorous undoing
of knots not yet made.
Everything raised askew then, the figure 8’s
changed and though I couldn’t
see ending, I knew infinity
had a definite beginning