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Avalon
  • Home
  • Spring 2025
    • Poetry
      • A Soulmate
      • All the Globe's a Stage
      • At The Water's Edge
      • Big Sisters
      • Cotton-Stuffed Heart
      • Doom, Sleep, Mastication, and My Godson Jeremiah
      • Foolish Lemons
      • I Know Icarus
      • nightstand as self-portrait
      • one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight days
      • Pasiphaë
      • Poem for a Stranger
      • Pilot of the Hollow Vessel
      • Rehoming; or, a habitat for creatures who seek darkness and cold
      • Sanctuary
      • The World Inside a Sidewalk Crack
      • Year of the Frog
      • you think it's easy opening doors in january?
      • Your Haiku
    • Fiction & Plays
      • Calculated Sympathy
      • Indigo
      • Maurice
      • The Cradle
      • The Hollow Room
    • Visual Art
      • A Farmer in Vinales Cuba
      • A Tobacco Farmer in Viñales, Cuba
      • Thank you, please come again
      • Self Reflective Self Portrait 5
    • Contributors
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    • Home
    • Spring 2025
      • Poetry
        • A Soulmate
        • All the Globe's a Stage
        • At The Water's Edge
        • Big Sisters
        • Cotton-Stuffed Heart
        • Doom, Sleep, Mastication, and My Godson Jeremiah
        • Foolish Lemons
        • I Know Icarus
        • nightstand as self-portrait
        • one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight days
        • Pasiphaë
        • Poem for a Stranger
        • Pilot of the Hollow Vessel
        • Rehoming; or, a habitat for creatures who seek darkness and cold
        • Sanctuary
        • The World Inside a Sidewalk Crack
        • Year of the Frog
        • you think it's easy opening doors in january?
        • Your Haiku
      • Fiction & Plays
        • Calculated Sympathy
        • Indigo
        • Maurice
        • The Cradle
        • The Hollow Room
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        • A Tobacco Farmer in Viñales, Cuba
        • Thank you, please come again
        • Self Reflective Self Portrait 5
      • Contributors
    • Past Issues
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        • Poetry
        • Fiction & Plays
        • Visual Art
        • Contributors
      • Spring 2024
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 Spring 2025     Poetry 

one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight days

Natalie Fountain

calloused fingers press softly into the skin

of my collarbone. the skin bends and gives;

hidden bone solid and unwavering. earth unrelenting.

 

there is a version of you that lasts,

somewhere in my dreams. a skeleton that sits

safe in its coffin; soft tissue gone, but collagen and calcium remaining.

 

saltwater rests on your lips,

the burn of cologne seared into my nose.

we have left each other worse than we found each other.

 

if we woke up in a past,

where your hands never tucked hair behind my ear

and my stumbling mind never took you down in its fall,

 

would you look for me?

even if we have knocked breaks into each other’s bones

are we not also made into what we are meant to be?

 

the world hasn’t stopped spinning

and my bones still rest beneath my skin.

different, maybe, but lasting. persistent.

 

i would look for you.

A Soulmate

All the Globe's a Stage

At The Water's Edge

Big Sisters

Cotton-Stuffed Heart

Doom, Sleep, Mastication, and My Godson Jeremiah

Foolish Lemons

I Know Icarus

nightstand as self-portrait

one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight days

Pasiphaë

Poem for a Stranger

Pilot of the Hollow Vessel

Rehoming; or, a habitat for creatures who seek darkness and cold

Sanctuary

The World Inside a Sidewalk Crack

Year of the Frog

you think it's easy opening doors in january?

Your Haiku

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