These days, what is there to talk about
but love,
the curve of your cheek,
the curve of your head,
the curvature of planet
glimpsed when I was too young to understand
that love, like Earth,
is always curving back
to kiss its origins:
your blue gaze brushing
my smitten lips
while I ramble on about Emerson
to keep your gaze from swerving back
to the ex chatting on your left
as a bead descends
your untouched glass
and I realize you’ve begun to seem
less like a stranger
and more like a dream
I’m starting to remember
as though we’re flirting
in the past
of a future we already share
from which love
like Earth
has circled back
to begin in us again.
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Joy Ladin has published eleven books of poetry, including her latest collection, Family; National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna; and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation. She is also the author of three prose works: Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender; National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors.
