UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

BLANK by Caroline Barr

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.