To the Man I Stared at in My Friends’ Friends’ Apartment for More Than 20 Minutes

by Emily Tuttle

 

Your eyes are made of
grappling hooks,
places where strangers have
latched themselves
to the hollows of your cheekbones.
I reached out,
never once thinking when
I threw my line that
it would catch,
thin wire hooked to
the craters of your skin…
Now my gaze is
caught in yours,
tangling over strands of
light when we face each other,
stretching together, taut edges of
a tightrope our visions dance across,
but you blink in
the middle of our waltz
and the line slips out between
my sweating fingertips…
Falling to my knees,
I mourn you.
You turn your back to me,
leaving me an echo
to worship
the altar of your spine.


Emily Tuttle is puTJECKLEBURGPHOTOrsuing her degree in English, with a minor in neuroscience, at the University of Maryland. She is editor in chief of the creative and critical journals on campus and is an editorial assistant at Poet Lore. She has been previously published with Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review, Blotterature, and Carcinogenic Poetry, and in 2015, won an honorable mention for the Jimenez-Porter Literary Prize.
 

 

Emily Tuttle
Emily Tuttle is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, where she received her degree in English, with a minor in neuroscience and creative writing. She was editor in chief of the creative and critical journals on campus and editorial assistant at Poet Lore. She has been previously published with Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review, Blotterature, DistrictLit and Straylight Magazine, among others. She has won the Jimenez-Porter Literary Prize for poetry and was featured in the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle.