by Caroline Barr
I think maybe you’re like the earring
I left at another man’s apartment.
The gold one, knotted like knuckles
looking for each other, the one my mother
told me do not lose this, you know the one.
You’re like it because somehow I’m not convinced
it’s gone.
No, it’s just at the bottom of my purse
or in a misguided pocket
or maybe the back of your throat.
Stuck where the move to California
should’ve been, growing mossy and ever-itchy—
do you feel it? Embedded in your Adam’s apple.
It’s like that.
Like the feeling of trying to run
but you can’t get past that first catch in your ankles.
Like that.
It’s like this man’s breath on my neck when all I can think about
is how I can’t believe I asked you to hold
my subway pass and debit card and my goddamn Chanel lipstick
and expected you not to lose them all.
Like that.
It’s like laying on the dock and feeling the sun
pop each dusty skin cell into something I wish you would miss.
Like that.
It’s like that.
It’s like taking a shower, but the shower curtain is missing
and the air is cold and there’s too much water on the floor
so I sit down.
It’s like that.
Like me reaching up to my earlobe, blank
and thinking of you.
Caroline Barr is a native of Huntsville, Alabama currently pursuing a MFA in Poetry at The University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is a contributing writer for ANNA Magazine, LLC, freelance blogger and editor, and has been previously published in Two Hawks Quarterly.