By N Nguyen
Six feet apart,
person from person—
I can’t say I know how to see that.
A six foot person is tall, but
I can’t see
six feet wide. Still, it don’t matter.
Stuck in my home, the safest
place to be, but the people
within become the unknown.
Absent father makes sure
I always wash my hands,
hardest workin’ mama cocooned
in bed. The scariest stranger
is the one I see in the mirror.
I don’t know him.
He’s spent so many years as
the watcher, yet now he reaches out
his hand to a person— a person!
We don’t touch people, not now
not ever.
I don’t know him.
He loves someone. He does not love someone.
He loves them He loves them He loves them H
He does not. We don’t. We don’t love people.
We don’t yearn for them, we’ve never
known their touch, we’ve never known
warmth, they’re all fake.
I don’t know him.
He’s looking for something he’s never had
like Eve to the apple, the apple that’s
six feet away.
We won’t get anything from a caress,
a hug, a kiss, an ‘I love you’, so
stop trying.
Stop looking that way. Stop.
I don’t know him.
He hears the siren’s call through the wall.
His fingers bleed as he claws
through, getting lost in the abyss
like I knew he would. He won’t
call them—
he won’t.
I don’t know him.
He’s flung himself across the gulf
despite never trying
so before. Why now? Why at all?
In my room, the safest place of all
because it is mine, there’s a monster
invading. He’s grasped onto me
and made me unrecognizable.
That stranger is hugging someone
so tightly he might crush them,
relieved tears making dark spots
on the siren’s shirt.
I don’t know him.
