local_library Here and There

by Spencer Smith

Published in Issue No. 248 ~ January, 2018

For a moment there

I thought I was somewhere else,

but I am still here, encased in this place

like sausage curing in a back room.

 

If only my father could see me now,

but he is somewhere else,

although sometimes I still hear his voice here,

as if just offstage, muffled by moving sets.

 

I lifted my chirping phone once,

perched on my hand like a tropical bird,

but it just squawked the unfamiliar words

of someone else’s father.

The text from an unknown number

and the special email from a Nigerian prince

did nothing to repair the torn rope bridge

that once tied us together.

 

I know it is irrational,

but I cannot sweep up the courage to go elsewhere

with no copy of myself left here in waiting

to greet him and call me back to meet him.

 

What if while I strike north with purpose,

he arrives from the south to find only my echo,

and we miss each other again?

Or what if he does not miss me at all?

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Spencer Smith is a University of Utah graduate and works in the corporate world to pay the bills that poetry doesn’t pay (i.e., all of them). His work has appeared in over forty literary journals, including Main Street Rag, Potomac Review, Plainsongs, RHINO, and Roanoke Review.