You were skipping stones and I was romancing
the thought of your hands
and my hands and
the miles of water between us,
Wondering what the distance means,
our bodies like pebbles that don’t know when to drown.
Look at us, the cracks in our bones grasping for light.
Look at how bad we are at sinking:
my arms flailing like a broken moon—
orbiting you like a planet with no gravity.
Your smooth back, your empty ribcages,
seizing me with those dirty hands
And the tiny stones lodged inside of them.
Every spring, I have a dream
Where you are almost naked,
staring at the sky in a field of golden wheat,
looking into the aubergine sunset,
your skin the junction of tomorrow and what was—
smooth enough for skipping stones.
Silence is the tightest bud,
So we do what we can
to keep from making a sound,
but you were right:
It’s not the sinking that scares me, it’s what comes after.
You were the one who taught me that those two things are different,
both our chests crumbling like boulders.
About Sean Glatch
Sean Glatch is a poet, editor, and educator from Milwaukee, WI. His poetry has been featured in 8 Poems, L’Ephemere Review, Rising Phoenix Press, and The Poetry Annals. Sean is a Katherine Keller fellow, a Best of the Net nominee, and the former Editor-in-Chief of The Cypress Dome at the University of Central Florida. He’s probably thinking about his next cup of coffee.