I may soon love

I may soon love

Lily Holloway

I spent all summer trying to come up with something new to say

about horses, about loneliness, about the bottom of the ocean.

Could you reach into language, pull out its hot heart? I am looking

for something solid. I am waiting for the shame to fade. Today,

all my worries have weight and shape: a tiny plastic liferaft,

a leather saddle. In a dream, a stranger tells me exactly who I am.

On TV, the narrator asks: Could these chimps help us know ourselves?

And I think the answer is probably not in the way one might long for.

Alone, I saw the escaped foal disappear into the thicket and thought:

Is this anything?? Often, I am embarrassed by private sadnesses.

A year before I was born, five million lego pieces were lost at sea.

Before sleep, I imagine each piece as a node of light on a vast black map.

If I say, everything is connected and yet nothing is, will you stay?

I am a tiny plastic shark and you are a tiny plastic harpoon.

When I slip into nihilism and cliché, I tell myself off, don’t worry.

What person hasn’t thought: Life is both cruel and beautiful!

What person hasn’t asked: God, how do I navigate? I am trying

not to seem so self-serious. I spend a lot of time pretending

to be a third-party spectator. An orphan chimpanzee has no one

to tell him how to behave. He throws a tantrum, screams

and tears trees down, so the older males beat him up.

Later, he grooms them and they do not groom him back.

I am just telling you what I know to be true. There is an art to it,

giving things their appropriate value. I may soon love

with complete disregard for likelihoods. The foal may live

free a while longer. Somewhere, there is beauty free from witness.

Sometimes, I feel so much joy it is like I have been cracked open.