THE SMALLNESS OF BEARS Charlotte Gilmore

I try to write poetry about smaller things, about spinning in the living room with wild hair, loud music and cookies on snow days, the happiness in shared indignation as we watch the year slip from between our fingers. And there I go again. I can’t enjoy a moment without categorizing it as some sort of Tragedy, Realization, or Epiphany. And this is simply not the sort of love you write poetry about - there are no gentle touches, no soft glances and there are no terrible storms, no tears, no worlds ending without you. But I think that is the preciousness of it. We balance between extremes, on a speck of dust that catches the light sometimes when we are sitting in a coffee shop and laughing, and we tell each other to Zoom Out. I look down, and there we are, in the light, horizontally fading. I hold these moments even as they speed away; collect specks of dust until they pile or drift into night-settled, music-quieted, rain-thudding fears of isolation; and I try, at least, to write poetry about smaller things.