Escape

by Emily Hockaday ​

I escape through a wormhole
and you follow me there; I make
another wormhole. You hold onto
my arm so I am straddling two universes—
one in which you let me go, and one in which
I stay. It is lonely here, caught between
a future and a past. Have you felt like this
all along? I saw you, yesterday, so still
you could have been marble. Looking out
the window to the apple tree and the many
starlings perched in its branches.
I could have stepped through then,
into the apartment’s morning dim, silently.
But you were so beautiful
in that light: smudged around the face, like
a figure in a painting. I needed you
to see me go.

Emily Hockaday's first full-length collection, Naming the Ghost (Cornerstone Press) was released in September 2022. She is the author of five chapbooks, most recently the ecology-themed Beach Vocabulary. Her poems have appeared in print and online journals, as well as with the Poets of Queens and Parks & Points’ Wayfinding anthologies. Emily is the recipient of a New York City Artists Corps grant, a Café Royal Cultural Foundation grant, and the winner of the Middle House Review Editors’ Prize. You can find Emily on the web at emilyhockaday.com or @E_Hockaday.