THE POEM AND THE PHOTO

It takes three flights for The Poem to get to New York. She thinks about The Photo all the way there. Why it didn’t work out, why it couldn’t work out. Long distance is tough. Better to walk away now with her syntax intact than stay with someone who wants to reorder her according to natural light.

The Photo throws herself into her work. They’re too different; The Poem is too emotional. She tells her colleagues that The Poem goes from free verse to sonnet at warp speed and the volta, the turn, is never in The Photo’s favour:

And yet despite my love, you ignore me,

But you’re happy to be mine when it suits.

The Poem spends her first month in New York taking as many Novels to bed as she possibly can. There’s a comfort in not having to talk about herself. Novels crowd her with unnecessary words, blotting out her sorrows with countryside, war prose and unfulfilled dreams. She thinks about The Photo on her morning runs when the sun makes its glorious return.

The Photo drinks a lot of gin with her friends and tells them she felt too exposed, too seen. She says The Poem will find a decent Essay in Brooklyn, someone who’ll take good care of her.

Months pass. The Poem can’t find any work. She moves back home. The Photo sees it on Instagram and her insides pang, the cityscape she’s been holding onto gives way to a close-up.

After a respectful period, long enough that The Poem is reading herself again in front of artsy, academic crowds, The Photo sends The Poem an email full of sunsets. Each one is more beautiful than the last. Below the suns, in small blue words, a note:

My love, what comes after the volta?