by Joshua Zeitler

            for Lynn

I look for you when the window is open and the world a skin of breath apart. I look for you in limned leaf, in Linden pressed thin as the page it dresses. Marks. I look for you in cracked spine, in dogear, underline. I look for you in cat’s purr, delectable throated texture of pleasure. When I shrink in grief, I look for you in bonded molecule. In turn and tumble of minuscule tether. I look for you in chicory, parched bloom that unfurls for morning’s kiss. I look for you in curl of smoke and fog. Delicious lungful. Ambitious blanket. I look for you in latte foam. Homely structure of absence. I look for you in leap and roil, in kettle rasp and steam gasp. I look for you in pupil’s light grasp, the eye learning tender touch. I look for you in aperture. In chamber of figures captured and released from time. I look for you in dodging. In hammer’s claw, in seam ripper, in white-out and bowed snow shovel. I look for you in knit and flannel, hat and glove, snug button. I look for you in the white space of every poem. I leave little so the cracks of you sing brighter. Your timbre luminescent. Yes, beloved, I tire of looking; and, only then, eyes closed, do I find you.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, Wildness, Pine Hills Review, and elsewhere. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press), and serve as the poetry editor for the Substack-based literary journal The Long & The Short of It.