The ache of non-reciprocity in love is an
ice-cold metal sphere in an
otherwise burning pinball machine body.
It’s the blue middle finger attached to
the frozen-limb realization that all her
gnawing writer years will be wasted.
She knows with a rushing red certainty
that she could kick back with Wordsworth, but
the cold coagulates this frozen hope—this frozen body’s blood.
It seems like all the good
poets write about an excess of love, and she
can only write about its absence.
Then again, she supposes,
worship
done right
is answered with silence.
And once the face is forgotten, to feel lonely is to go
back to loving the vacant space behind
every poet’s “you.”