I assume you are deadly serious when hugging robots is involved.

I am not planning on cross-posting all of the poems I write for the GYWO Settings Bingo Card, but I really like how this one turned out. Not bad for a lunch time's work.


[Art by Philip Straub]

His muffled words against my joint, I understand,
but do not absorb. They are empty when I
shake them down. Through the glass we watch the
gleaming steel allowed to fly, allowed to be what it is,
whileI stand by wearing a bright orange sweater,
reminding him of intimacies left behind.

He loves the metal conveyances, whose weight defies,
the way their generators cycle and their rudders twitch.
Loves the sunlight that trickles down the buildings
that were built to stand proudly above the clouds.
Loves the swallow drones as they climb and dip
on their descent to the reflecting water far, far below.

We stand at the window. The sun sets. My arms,
the only steel in the whole city he doesn’t love,
locked around him. Half an hour every day, as I work
to cure a malady he also doesn’t love and doesn’t
try to explain. His words beg me to understand,
but he leaves empty those concepts I find relatable.

For 23 and a half hours a day I’m propped alone
against the glass. I try to watch. Try to rebuild what I see
in his image. So I can recalibrate, and be the cure he needs.
So I can be released. Because I’m all arms and no mouth, and smarter
than they meant me to be. I’ve learned a prescribed nightly embrace
will never do as much for his supposed soul as the swallow drones.

The history they promise.
The future they tease.
As they climb and dip on their descent,
to whatever lies far, far below.

Maybe I'll turn it into a chapbook exercise. Sorry about the robots! (Not really.)