Out Walking

by Jennifer Horne

We don’t know how to behave.
As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
At awkward distances from one another.

As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
In this new space, revising
All that we’ve been taught.

In this new space, revising
The meaning of breath, hand, touch, near,
Our bodies become foreign to us.

The meaning of breath, hand, touch, of near
Misses and close calls, becomes obsessive.
Even the air between us is charged now.

Misses and close calls become obsessive.
Better to stay in the one safe place,
Alone but uninfected. The new monasticism.

Better to stay in the one safe place
Than become a number. The days
Stop counting themselves, simply march on.

Become number. The days
Are the same and utterly different.
Only a fool would complain about being alive.

The same and utterly different,
We don’t know how to behave.
As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
At awkward distances from one another.

Jennifer Horne is the Poet Laureate of Alabama (2017-2021). The author of three collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, and Borrowed Light, she also has written a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildfower. She has edited or co-edited four volumes of poetry, essays, and stories, and in 2020 she co-edited, with her sister, a collection of their mother’s poetry, Root & Plant & Bloom: Poems by Dodie Walton Horne. Her latest work is a biography of the writer Sara Mayfield. Horne has taught creative writing in a variety of settings, including the position of Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University for the spring semester of 2018, has been the recipient of fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Seaside Institute in Florida, and in 2015 was awarded the Druid City Literary Arts Award, given by the Tuscaloosa Arts Council. Her webpage and blog, “A Map of the World,” can be found here.