The Oranges Will Still Grow Without Us
by
Kate Sweeney
Kate Sweeney is a poet living in Los Angeles. She is Marketing Director for The Adroit Journal, and Word is Bond, a community-centered poetry reading series partnered with AAWW that raises funds for transnational relief efforts and mutual aid organizations. Her work has appeared in Northwest Review, Moria Magazine, The Shore Poetry, and other places, and is forthcoming from Jet Fuel Review.
from The Oranges Will Still Grow Without Us
Of all the varieties of pain, loneliness may be the most lonely
Today, I worry about the distance.
How we cross it. What we lose to time.
The brutality of mountains between there and here.
A brutality that says receive, but makes no offer.
If Leander tried to walk instead of swim,
would the story have gone a different way?
Today, I think about how you touch me
without using your hands.
There’s a persona poem I keep replaying:
in it, the desperate poet walks straight
into their lover’s shower, fully clothed,
with total disregard for all of the ordinary barriers.
I wonder if there is anything that moves you like this?
