Atonement by Liz Fisher

I will say that I have touched her hands 

and let them go. I am filled 

with this lingering and fading. 

I will say I have known her, 

felt her heartbeat and her laughter, 

studied the sacred geometries of the lines on her face,

and still I looked away. We are destined 

to make these mistakes. 

I can watch her dance next to me in vague memories

but I could no more explain the way her body moves

than the way the sun fractals within a shallow ocean. 

I will say that sometimes in the mirror 

she looks out at me and does not see me, 

and sometimes I think to text her but don’t, 

and sometimes I grieve the girls we were, the woman I wasn’t,

which isn’t fair but nothing is fair when you’re sixteen.

I will say that I regret, and that I miss, and I wish, 

but they are familiar, hollowed words, and I think 

(maybe) she knows anyway. 

I will say to you now that this chord does not resolve,

rather slips pleasantly into sonic entropy, 

and that I know less about her and the application of thermodynamic

law in music theory than I do about whatever is at the center

of a neutron star, strange and brilliant and (possibly) a dream,

and (perhaps) it is all just space and noise. 

I leave the coffee shop in our shared hometown and realize

this is the first time in five years 

we have spoken about our curls, 

and (may be) the last. I hope this apology will suffice, encompass.

My bluetooth adapter is begging me to listen 

to the afterglow of the Big Bang, just satellite static,

so I put on Frank Ocean and pretend 

it isn’t winter, that I remember the shades of brown in her eyes,

that I can still hear the chord; 

it will remain long after becoming inaudible.

Liz Fisher is a Minnesota poet and writer. After spending four years in the North Woods, she is particularly interested in examining the complex relationships that connect her to a larger constellation. Liz finds fulfillment in exploring memory, nostalgia, inarticulate emotion, and how these are present in all things great and small. Her work has been published in Milk Tooth student literary magazine.