Come here, please. The overboard seeds have brought
birds and fish deep into the wake. The slipping glance
the sun gives on its way to tomorrow golds each
of their feedings. I don’t want to see all of this alone. I don’t
want each head disappearing into water or air to be only mine
to keep. I want so badly to ask you if you think
all this fruitful disappearing is a promise the evening is making,
like the word evening itself: an oath of balance—that what
is given and taken will zero into some harmony that can
mean against a gnat’s hum or a motor’s hum or a throat’s
hum for a performative kiss. Somethings must say I love
you louder than they have to because so many things will
never say it at all. The stone will never thank the breakers
for its transformation into sand, for the license to cover so much
more than its tiny locked body could. Please, come. Breathe
this day’s last breeze and remember the shapes we held
before we didn’t and promise me when I shift into whatever
comes next, you will remember how badly I wanted you
here to taste the new night growing out of our shadows, the moment
that evidence of a you and an I blend into one thing that wraps
half the world—this blanket no one gets to keep.
John A. Nieves
John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Hopkins Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems, and Southern Review. A 2024 Pushcart Prize winner, he also won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry.
