"What Love Doesn’t Know About Me"
by Anna Leahy
I’ve stolen quarters and candle holders. I’ve lost
an earring to sheets and worn the other one
the next day. I’ve made promises to future selves
to stop time in the now’s darkened bedroom.
Whether in one’s spiraling arms or another’s, proximity
made centripetal force seem like gravity then.
I already felt heavy enough. I imagined something
so dense, so massive that it became the tunnel
at the end of the light. It grew by accretion. I kept leaves
in my pockets like time passing somewhere else.
For years, I ran what-ifs across my mental sky, was surprised
when someone mistook the contrails for inclination
instead of the test of who I might become
in suburbia with two young boys in plaid shirts.
What if I were the other woman? What if I died?
What if I were happy—how much exactly could change?
I once snuck a dying star into a whispered airport farewell
to see whether something in the universe would contract.
No one can travel at the speed of light, so
we’re always chasing it. Once, though, years ago,
when I walked across the lawn, my hair still wet,
the space between cosmic lives collapsed.
The certainty of my shadow stretching—and me
no longer running from it—was a surprise in my chest.
All that anyone else could see was the ginkgo tree shedding
her fetid leaves like fans, bright yellow in the simple daylight
as if nothing had changed in 200 million years.
While all the other trees died out, this one stayed
to shred me into shimmer at the unexpected edge of my horizon.
*Commissioned by Write on Door County for their summer music collaboration in 2023
an earring to sheets and worn the other one
the next day. I’ve made promises to future selves
to stop time in the now’s darkened bedroom.
Whether in one’s spiraling arms or another’s, proximity
made centripetal force seem like gravity then.
I already felt heavy enough. I imagined something
so dense, so massive that it became the tunnel
at the end of the light. It grew by accretion. I kept leaves
in my pockets like time passing somewhere else.
For years, I ran what-ifs across my mental sky, was surprised
when someone mistook the contrails for inclination
instead of the test of who I might become
in suburbia with two young boys in plaid shirts.
What if I were the other woman? What if I died?
What if I were happy—how much exactly could change?
I once snuck a dying star into a whispered airport farewell
to see whether something in the universe would contract.
No one can travel at the speed of light, so
we’re always chasing it. Once, though, years ago,
when I walked across the lawn, my hair still wet,
the space between cosmic lives collapsed.
The certainty of my shadow stretching—and me
no longer running from it—was a surprise in my chest.
All that anyone else could see was the ginkgo tree shedding
her fetid leaves like fans, bright yellow in the simple daylight
as if nothing had changed in 200 million years.
While all the other trees died out, this one stayed
to shred me into shimmer at the unexpected edge of my horizon.
*Commissioned by Write on Door County for their summer music collaboration in 2023
Anna Leahy’s books include the poetry collections Gloss, What Happened Was:, Aperture, and If in Some Cataclysm (forthcoming) and the nonfiction book Tumor. Her work has won top awards from Mississippi Review, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood and appears at Aeon, Atlanta Review, The Atlantic, Bennington Review, BuzzFeed, Poetry, Scientific American, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She edits Tab Journal and has been a fellow at MacDowell and the American Library in Paris. More at https://amleahy.com.