by Vincent James Perrone
Someone said you would be here—by the lake on a cold April day.
No one said it. Maybe I said it. If I was looking, I’d wager
you’re ducked under the table in a very nice restaurant.
Finding the luxury of rebirth in a stranger’s eyes. Glancing out
the window of a moon-colored house, waving with hands stained
from picking raspberries. Life can be made small—hidden like fish
on a cold April day. I wake up some mornings and lose track of myself.
My luck is a snake plant surviving without light. That satellites
orbit my head like cartoon hearts. I’m held in space by the varying gravity
of our eyes. And now there’s nothing more to say about eyes. Instead
what I’m looking for is a way to say one thing that means another.
To translate a gesture. To make something so small I can lose it
without noticing. I’m looking, I say, my mouth full of rain.
I could find you anywhere and to think, I could be found.
Vincent James Perrone is a Detroit-based writer and musician. He is the author of “Starving Romantic” (11:11 Press, 2018), a contributor to “Collective Voices in the Expanding Field” (11:11 Press, 2020), and co-founder of the 51 W. Warren Writers Group. Recent work published and forthcoming from The Indianapolis Review, Ghost City Press, Levee Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, and Corvus Review. His musical endeavors include the experimental-rock group Lacan, and indie collective Glynn Court. Say hi at vincentjamesperrone.com
Emerge Literary Journal 