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This poem is part of the Claritas spring 2025 issue, Connection. Read the full print release here.

By: Nate lo

Maybe it was foolish

to read your email after midnight.

I can only strain my eyes so much

before I lose patience with patience–

my fingers clicking,

ticking away the time that belonged to us

sitting beside the Hudson, water lapping

around our setting reflections

while you talk of bread and fish and your notebooks

filled with bookmarks. So that you’ll never lose a place

like this one, you say; so that you can always find

how you shuddered the first time you read your name

in someone else’s handwriting.

Is it the same when you read mine? I asked,

eyes muffled by the shutter of a blue screen,

muted glow of evening closing over

turtles as they reenter the water,

splotches of sunlight washing over their slabs.

I want their insides to be vaulted like a cathedral,

everything arches and geometry and prayers

pressing up towards the surface,

their whole lives a filled space

echoing with need and desire

springing into a psalm hushed

by wonder. 

“Does it always end this way?” I ask

no one in particular, though I am sure

God is listening in,

deigning to remind me that you had a favorite psalm,

and that you thought it’d be funny to wonder aloud–

intrusive memory now that I can’t help–

why God would choose to be a bird

instead of a turtle.

Hide me in the shadow of your carapace, I replied,

and maybe I laughed, and maybe

you were laughing too, or maybe

we’ve all been laughing this whole time,

intoxicated by each other’s shadows, or maybe

it was all a trick of (blue) light, starlings

chattering the dusk away from their bodies and 

towards the couple sitting two benches away,

murmured silhouettes leaning into each other– 

rippled, like the ridges of our pressed palms,

formed, formless, forming

shudders–   

imagine,

in that half second of involuntary surrender,

that my body is a hot brand

steaming from the furnace,

memory of your hips

hissed and curving

into bemusement–searching

for lips–

longing.