José Echeverría Vega (He/Him) is a poet from Phoenix, Arizona. During the day he works somewhere in local government; at night he is at work on his first manuscript. He lives with his aggressively affectionate dog Juni.
Construction of a Poem
Suppose I wrote this poem on your lap
and traced its outline from your spine.
Each syllable a tuft of sprouting
yellows strawberries and reds,
fields fed from warming skin.
Consonants lap in your evergreen pools,
flecked with honey they spill out from where you sit.
The sun will set soon you say as I
collect these stanzas from your chest
and dig a grave for them in mine.
Suppose I found a vowel in your mouth
and from it bloomed this final line.
The Space Between
One day I hope you call to say you met your childhood self, held his hand, and walked him to a softer tomorrow.
One day I hope you call to say the tide that rolled in and scraped your knees against its corals could not take you in its currents.
One day I hope you call to say you no longer need someone to hold your clammy hands and count with you from ten
to nine
to eight
to zero, calming what stopped you in your orbit.
One day I hope you call to say you hiked the Grand Canyon and found fossils of our shared experience between eroded layers of
denial
and
acceptance.
One day I hope you call to say you mined the earth and found your star deep beneath its mantle.
And one day I hope you call to say joy and confidence greeted you at the door, sat at your table, and have not left.