ISSUE 4
Scott Davidson
Suspension
In the time it takes this cloud of light to cross the floor
we’ve left the bodies that walked through heavy fiesta
doors and it seems the light, by the path it’s taking,
has chosen who we’ve become. By the puzzle
tree, almost touching, you the girl who can name
the moment life stopped revolving around her, me
the boy who stared at passing scenery from the car
and wanted to know how much it cost. Thinking
we’re suddenly shallow is easy and misses the point –
how days pile up disappointment so deep that by the time
we’re here, neither of us knows if we care about much,
only that so many closed circles – waiting for tables,
waiting to order – keep falling short of how we imagined
them. Still not touching, disengaged from others, it’s
how we let these versions of us – their separateness –
change who we are. When our name is called, I rise to
face the room of strangers, you striding off to join the
hostess, needing at first to match the pace of the world.
We are the selves who leave and enter together,
so you stop, wait, reach back your hand.
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Scott Davidson grew up in Montana, worked for the Montana Arts Council as a Poet in the Schools, and – after most of two decades in Seattle – lives with his wife in Missoula. His poems have appeared in Southwest Review, Hotel Amerika, terrain.org, Bright Bones: Contemporary Montana Writing, and the Permanent Press anthology Crossing the River: Poets of the Western United States.