there are certain quiets
that can only happen in the yawn of august:
the unspoken eulogy
of paper-machete earthworms on a walkway;
the reconciliation of a misplaced
kiss and a puckered dimple;
the hollow bellow of breath against earlobe.
they are not quite the quiet of absence,
more like the shape of a cavity,
a salvaging of space in hopes of meaning,
or answers, or the right questions to ask, even.
this, i imagine, is how it will sound
once you are gone.
i suspect moments like these:
when i listen for the sandy nestle
of your beard against my cheek,
or check between couch cushions
for the lingering murmurs you tucked
in my ear before sleep.
on the nights of those muted relapses,
i will recall the firefly –
who, in cupped hands,
wails. his small howl cannot be heard
over the breeze that brings the good
goosebumps before the bad ones.
the wind whispers the reminder
of a chicago winter,
and, in the hazy lighting of my memory,
the bug’s moans sound a bit like a prayer
coming from a girl’s clasped hands.
Header photograph © Icy Blu Daniel.
Brittany Coppla is a nonfiction candidate pursuing her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, where she is the digital editor for LUMINA Journal. She often writes poetry and nonfiction about in-between spaces, sleep, memory, and bodies (but also has a bad habit of writing about earlobes). Her work has found homes in LUMINA, the anthology The Anatomy of Desire, Red Queen Literary Magazine, Asterism, Colonnades, Visions, and is forthcoming in L’Éphémère Review. She likes when people call her B, and her day-to-day words can be found on Twitter @beecoppla.