Mind
There’s a word they say in Morayshire: mind, not in the sense
of thinking organ, but in the sense of remembering. Do you mind
the time he ran away? As in, can you bring it to mind? As in,
he was always running away. Mining? they ask. Are you
mining? As in, do you remember what he looked like
before he left? As in, he’s in the wind with a consonant
capacity for disappearance. The North Sea fogs the air,
an eruption, disruption around the silences. What is he trying
to say with his breath? That sharp inhalation, two beats,
chest a timpani of longing. He wants to do it right, yet the cage
of circumstances. Hiy, hiy, he says, two quick pulls of breath,
nodding to you in the High Street, as in, he sees you but needs
to leave you. You mind the tourmaline beseeching in his eyes,
the echo of his feet on the harbor dock, the sailing away.
.
Tori Grant Welhouse is a poet and novelist from Wisconsin with an award-winning poetry chapbook Vaginas Need Air (Etchings Press, 2020) and a prize-winning YA fantasy novel The Fergus (Skyrocket Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared most recently in Red River Review, Cloudbank and 3rd Wednesday. She is an active volunteer for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (www.wfop.org) and co-creator of the literary magazine Bramble. Learn more www.torigrantwelhouse.com.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 