FONDER

 We made a furl with fingers, letters littering the space between usWith soft caresses and tender tugs and in my belly I can feel it aching.I count the number of trees out the window. Notice the birds and colorof the sky. I live in the sky, mostly.I have to remind myself to put my feet on the earth. It takes a lot of practice.My feet reach for the surface. It feels so far away.When you read this, will you remember?What is locked? Is it what needs unlocking? Your tongueIn that place where vowels slide in elongated sunsets. Days spun webbyLike sour sugar milk. What type of distance is a mile? A fiction of two dimensionalSpace. Can you feel it? You won't remember this tomorrow. The ashesOf our fires blown invisible within the week. I can’t remember what it was likeTo be in my own mind, alone. You’ve haunted me for so long.I’ve grown so used to you. I mean you hunted me.____Michelle Detorie is the author of numerous chapbooks including Fur Birds (Insert Press), How Hate Got Hand (eohippus labs), and Bellum Letters (Dusie). She also makes visual poems, poetry objects, time-based poetry, and curates the public art project, The Poetry Booth. Her first full-length collection, After-Cave, was released with Ahsahta Press in late 2014. In 2015 she completed The Sin in Wilderness, a book-length erasure about love, animals, and affective geography. She is currently at work on a collection of prose pieces called FERAL PLANETS. She lives in Santa Barbara where she is the Director of the Communication Lab at Santa Barbara City College.