The Shape of Air

Annie Caldwell
The Junction
Published in
1 min readNov 12, 2019
Pixabay

Air is the shape of gone things.
It’s the shape of what-was
clinging to what-is
in a continuous current
of drifting, empty things.

Air is the shape of tattered butterflies
fluttering away from the place where love laid —
where passion, no longer shared,
empties from the outline of our bodies.
Air is the shape of cracks in our bond.
It’s the space between us expanding
into a rift of uncertainty.

The shape of air is the eye of a swirling storm.
It’s unsaid words we never shared —
shapes of wings rising in an empty sky
circling above the chasm of our silence,
like a big black cloud over us.

The shape of air is your heart —
hollow — where love drained out,
while mine still beats with hunger.
Air trembles while I summon the courage
to reach for you, but instead
bring back handfuls of nothing.
The shape of air is the absence of you
in the space that was us.
It’s a wide-spreading sunset
emptying into darkness —
into currents of gone things.

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Annie Caldwell
The Junction

Lifelong learner, experimenter, writer and lover of poetry.