Drinker of Ink

by Shannon Castleton

to dwell on the origin of pain is to become trapped in a loop—to circle the trauma as if in a semi-truck, until the tire grooves grow so deep, you can’t turn out to drive forward.

Papa always says one listens with one’s eyes,

In any language, I would say Peter like a classic film star to her lover,

How do you read my soul like a book?

I want readers to know that I loved someone and that someone loved me, and that we made a loving life together. Please, God, someday. Send someone.

A body wants another person’s arms to hold it. It does not long to hold as badly as it longs to be held. Here, it wants another body to say, rest here a while.

Ah, Peter Breznik. Sometimes you feel like the title of everything.

So much happens to and inside every human being on this planet—it’s as if we are all small infinite worlds. And how do we connect? How do we come to see each other’s constellations? Peter Breznik (many thoughts lead to him) says poems are one way to connect. I say food is another. I think every baked good and poem is a world. When you create one, you hand a person a view of the stars within you. When you eat someone’s bread or read someone’s poem, you walk the roads inside them—their memories, their joys, their sadnesses.

Just exchanging poems we both love would be like gifting our hearts to each other.

If I were ever to touch any part of him, I think it would first be as comfort, and then as desire.

I read you as a boy reads the girl whose mere presence and voice spark sudden fire in his chest.

“Vivienne, you’re better than poetry.”

but I was hurting too much—too loud—to hear her.

The present we live in vanishes before we blink, let alone write it down in ink.

Perfection might be easier if happiness were not so distracting.

I keep thinking about the words we don’t say, but the feelings we communicate anyway, through things. Longing, hope, heartache, love. Through stories, baked goods, sweatshirts, poetry.