Robert Okaji lives in Indiana with his wife, the poet Stephanie L. Harper. His work has appeared in Vox Populi, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, North Dakota Quarterly, Wildness and elsewhere.

The Hollow

Because I know you, I will wait for that
rose of light, the whiff of early life and sea
bending the night’s whim to a second petal
someplace between knee and chest,

fog and crow. Today I am a roof
awaiting walls, a lonely pebble embedded
in the dirt path by the garden and its
fallowed soil. Do you recall our first

shared breath? Galaxies imploded
and the pavement underfoot quaked
in unison as we calmed into each other’s

arms, discarding words for that minute,
finding ourselves in the pale, hollow light,
holding, somehow, the half we never knew.