Poem by Ashley Porras

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MAYBE YOU / YOU’RE NOT

Sometimes I’m the last to know.
Sometimes, when the city bus sloughs by
slosh collecting at the bumper
and all four wheels, I think
you might be on it (you’re not)
You on the bus, you moving
with one vector -- casually
through the ordinary things: a bakery
in late November, my bedroom
with the floor lamp on, mornings
when you think you are permitted to fall
without sticking. It’s the same fallacy
the snow follows in the third week
of the first month of this new year.
In mid-evening.
In the art of believing it is your body
moving towards me on Charlesgate West.
Soft plum sky. Light purple light.
Let me be the first to know.
Sometimes, I think it’d all be very possible
-- if only someone (maybe you)
could hold.