It is so often in the unknowing
that we find joie de vivre,
when before me lay a path
of possibilities and I followed the bricks
that made my heart beat the loudest
until a love, unbidden, slowed
all this moving, glinted
a left-cornered smile, asked
to share a dance with my nihilism

beneath a moonlight spotlight

I show you all of me: unzip
the shell of myself and welcome
you into something softer and you
unfurl every frame of mine—old
roll of film—and sit with each image
until it is beautiful, until my heart
is fashioned to fit in the space between
your seams, woven with golden strands
of wonderful whose threads are pulled

when the undoing creeps in like a window draft
unravels like seaweed-bound ankles on summer days

I will not ask for my belongings back:
the hair strands, the caresses, the secrets.
I gifted them to you. But I should hope
you don’t store them where they will be
sprinkled with garage dust, nor toss them
in billowing black plastic on an afternoon
spring cleaning, or worse, leave them

forgotten
at the sea floor of a junk drawer
opened but never searched through.

I should hope I have earned a spot
next to glasses on your nightstand
between briefcase paperwork pages
on the fork that brings a wife’s dinner
to your lips

I should hope this because
I know I will keep you
neatly tucked behind my ear
in the moonlight cascading the bridge
of my nose and right
on the tip of my tongue

each time I almost say your name

I should hope we both love
the remembering as much
as one can love another and
as much as I have loved you.

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Harrsch, Blake. “Unbidden,” Corner Pocket. Seton Hall University. May 2024.