Mutating Distance
Bonnie Stanard Your comfortable distance isn’t easy to estimate. What do you mean by mutually acceptable space? I keep the distance from your mouth to my ear at its proper length. Whether dressed or undressed, your hints make frogs of forgiveness. I can’t help but believe in paradise but, in a way I don’t understand, there’s trouble in the blanks. The distance between us as we talk is an art, you say, necessary to successful interaction. But it’s crimped with emptiness and disbelief. After a martini you speak of the thread ahead and glass roads, tinfoil travel, and lushing weather. But who are you fooling? Your address is in the throes of obscurity. Your embrace delivers a realizing and I question whether I’m a favor or a donaton. Winter skin sinks in from the back of everywhere and there’s water beneath my feet. The current below the freeze line ebbs and flows. |
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About the Author: Bonnie Stanard draws on her rural upbringing and an interest in history to write novels, short stories, and poems with credits in publications such as Persimmon Tree, Harpur Palate, The South Carolina Review, Slipstream and The Museum of Americana. She has published six historical fiction novels and a children’s book. She lives in South Carolina. Visit her website here.