I watch you stride into the distance
until I can feel your shadow,
until your silhouette projects
cavernous thoughts upon me

and I dissolve into the suggestion
of you. Oh, how you want my mouth
to spring open like a music box
so that you can revel in that selfsame velvet

darkness and wonder if this is what you feel like
to me. I listen to you speak to strangers
in pressed phrases and well-timed laughter,
knowing that you built me a shrine

drenched in the Catholic smell
of oil and perfume and smoldering sacred wood
where your only hymn was again, again, again,
where you feasted in a broken and saturated light

 

 

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Chloe Hollowell Hooks is a writer from Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Red Mud Review, and Duke Magazine, among others. She received her MFA from Columbia. www.chloehollowellhooks.com

 

 

 

Photo by Brina Blum on Unsplash