"While Reading Plato During a Lockdown" by Chelsea Dingman

I see you everywhere. I see you
when the moon sullies
the hare’s prints in the snow.

I see you in the windows
and hallways and eyes
hollowing my children’s faces.

You might’ve been sick,
or beautiful. Everyone
has a father. There are few

words for loneliness
like a child’s. I haven’t slept
for so long. The night

shrieks like a woman
who wakes to find her
partner dead beside her.

I want to go wherever
sense has gone. All words
are injury: sink, swim, kin.

Did you hear the rain
last night? It fell
apart on the patio

floor. It fell to shadows
in my mouth. I’m asking
about death. Like a star,

how it is to collapse.
I imagine you as light,
tethered to nothing.

I imagine I miss you
when I’m afraid
to open the doors.

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Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second poetry collection, Through a Small Ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (University of Georgia Press, 2020). She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018).