She does everything you choose not to
and returns each night while you sleep,
ever loyal. When you are alone, buried
in thoughts like warm sand, then you
feel her there. Whatever you want to give
her, she will take, all of it. Her expertise
is in safe keeping. Her body is made up
of the energy you expend while forming
decisions. She is the sentence unsaid
that afternoon in the car, and the city
you did not visit. She is a runner, fierce,
fearless. Somehow, she learned things
you ignored, how to build molecules,
unscrewing and tightening the atoms,
as if twisting balloons into dogs, rabbits.
Where to clamp which wire when jumping
a dead battery. All the hours sleep has taken
from you have been fed to her. If she could
put her arm around you, she would,
so grateful is she for what you don’t do.
Hannah Stephenson is a poet and instructor based in Columbus, Ohio. For more of her work, visit her daily poetry site, The Storialist.