Lover The stars watch you, same as your face in the lit kitchen window. You looking back at yourself looking away to open the gate, unlatch the bin. Face like a little moon, with its own gravity, pulling, adjusting. A flash of panic when you lose yourself and relief, sliding from between the trees. Gazing from a puddle, which love is that? What happens when you fall for yourself, when you lie down next to your voice: every moment a roll call, waiting for the reply voiced as a pinhole of light immediately retreating as if embarrassed at having made that sound. Place the bottle on the others, latch the bin. Close the gate, hold still as the energy of glass on glass flattens, you somehow with it, less than even a shadow in the shadow abundant suburbs until a screech owl whinnies faintly in the circle of outer dark so alien as to cause you to recall yourself and with leaping pulse recognize your lover distorted on the door of the neighbor’s car, the winking, geometric light of that bird described just enough to flesh you.
Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer and occasional community college teacher. His recent work has appeared in River Heron Review and Cleaver Magazine. He lives with his partner in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Grand Little Things 