Memoir

You were warm and fleshy pressed

into my hip, a constellation of varied

wails, a series of smiles in ellipses.

I cannot not write you into the world

because you left it; you did not live

in narrative. There is no story but

my story. And my story is only

a series of repeating gestures:

reaching, holding, releasing.

Our language was syllabic and

visceral and so ordinary that

time has emptied it from me.

Your legs once gripped my hip, an arm

rested on my shoulder, the other rose up

toward the sky, index finger pointed as

you mouthed moon.

Sarah Kaufman's poetry has appeared in Cloudbank and Parabola Online. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University and lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she works as a psychotherapist in private practice.