by Jacob Harris
reflections on ripping a postcard i had addressed to you,
beautiful reader: because you were not in the room
when i practiced carving your name into lovely curves
and because it burned me to tell you
“the weather’s been great here” because
here is a hateful way of saying that i cannot hear you breathe
and i cannot reach into your mouth and feel your
breath biting and bursting the words i heave
at your beating chest—which so lovingly agreed
to take all that i am and expand to such size
that we might sit together in the warm room of you
and, between us, sculpt some rough form from this messy, fevered thing.
Jacob Harris is a student at Centre College, where he studies English, Spanish, and creative writing, and where he was awarded the Paul Cantrell Poetry Prize by the Academy of American Poets. Jacob conceives of a poem as a relationship between a poet and a reader; he sees the reading and writing of poetry as the loving maintenance of a relationship between a poet and a reader; he’s grateful to you for your effort toward nurturing a relationship with him.