equilibrium undone
across two airport seats he lies, head in her lap, leaning into a sun of skirt and skin as she tips a vial into tendered ear and counts—one two three drops and done she has read the bottle’s cummerbund of caution—brow creased the ear is a delicate structure a labyrinth of alpine curves, caverns, wispy plains of frond-like cells that quiver with the summons of sound—a name, a song, a sigh sending charged currents to bones frail as starched lace the ear is a delicate structure a motherboard of balance and equipoise, but dizzying too— equilibrium easily undone, sensitive to touch, lips, tongue that send tremors through a whorly web, crossing parallels of latitude and lunar sigma of mystery canals the night they met she leaned in and whispered wine-warm and close, sending a frisson of flirtation that twined its way through curves of cochlea, teasing like fingers or feather on spine whispered and everything else fell away bringing them to this departing gate, where she smooths back his hair (in need of a trim) and counts—one two three rubs and done, sending quicksilver beads on safe passage godspeed she leans in, circles hand ‘round his ear shell sheltering shell and whispers he shudders, holds tight, steadies himself for flight, and the falling away of everything else
Lucinda Trew is a poet and essayist whose work has been featured in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, The Poet, Cathexis Northwest, Mockingheart Review, storySouth, Eastern Iowa Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and recipient of Boulevard Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. She teaches at Wingate University and lives and writes in Union County, N.C.
