Knots

by Lori Powell

For a long while this place didn’t know me.
The rain came and went according to its own life,
the metronome drip from the eaves
stately with history.

Every day I was an exception.
The floorboards discussed my bare feet.

But sometimes in the seconds
between sleeping and waking
a swiftness caught me up,
as if I were glimpsed
in the corner of another’s eye, fleeting
and possibly important.

I took my cues from the late afternoon light.
I touched what it touched,
ran my fingers along the edges of picture frames,
and followed the bright hair on your arm
upward to the curve of shoulder.
Everywhere I touched a small knot tied itself:
clove hitch, cat’s paw, angler’s loop.

In the end what held was enough:
the rain, the drip, the floorboards,
your slumbering arm across my hip
pulling me into this place,
making me seem as if I were real.