Parting

Air can hold any shape by parting
for other forms and you might only notice
when you feel a neck perched

in the nook of your shoulder
and feel the slightest gust
between your bodies like wind

through a tunnel. Think of her
silhouette on the brick kitchen wall,
how you only know the shape of light

by her darkness. The air sinks
to hold the hand she stretches out to you,
so firm with flesh and bone,

but do not forget all the air cradling
your every place her hands cannot.
Before this world of skin

you felt the fingers of air and wind
and when you become unfastened
shadows of this world, they will stay

pressed to your bodies because
even parted forms yearn for something
to touch them.

Josiah Nelson is an MFA in Writing student at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Existere, Vast Chasm Magazine, Fractured Lit., and Queen’s Quarterly, among others. He lives in Saskatoon.