Fermata

Fermata is a collection of poems about connection, distance, and the tension between what we feel and what we say. These pieces explore relationships that don’t follow a clear arc. Moments that resist resolution, people who leave without explanation, and the quiet aftermath of not knowing what to do with what’s left. The tone shifts between humor, reflection, and emotional restraint, but each poem shares a focus on the intimate and the unfinished.

1. The Boy Who Played Jazz and Looked Like a Bad Idea

you walked in like a time signature

i couldn’t count in —

sharp angles in soft fabric.

you smelled like heat and ambition

and you smiled like you were about to ruin me

but politely.

***

i wanted to be

your metronome.

or maybe your record cabinet —

always full of something unfinished,

always waiting to be opened

when the silence got too loud.

***

you once told me

jazz isn’t made —

it’s discovered.

i believed you,

which was mistake one.

mistake two was letting you

touch my elbow

and say “dissonance”

like it was foreplay.

***

we never kissed.

not really.

just hovered in that keyless space

between E major and forgetting.

***

you left a scarf in my closet.

or maybe a chord.

or maybe the echo of a solo

you never got to finish

because i blinked

and you were gone

and i was holding a receipt

for something soft and permanent,

in a silence that refused to resolve.

2. Yellow Starburst, Screensaver Prague, and the Boy Who Plays Chopin in July

He texted me at 5:03 AM:

“I found the blueberry incense.”

***

No punctuation. No context. Just certainty.

I tasted dirt and God in my throat.

***

We had been camping

but not really —

just sleeping in a tent

like we were waiting for the apocalypse to get bored.

***

The ground smelled like wet thinking.

He smelled like petrichor and toner ink.

His breath was a Schubert nocturne

played on a piano with two cracked keys

and the volume stuck at almost love.

***

I told him once:

“Your soul looks like an uncircumcised jazz solo.”

He didn’t ask what I meant.

He never asked what I meant.

He played Rachmaninoff instead.

***

The world said pink Starbursts.

He gave me yellow.

Said:

“They taste like conviction.”

Then stuck one behind my ear

like a prophecy.

It stayed there all day.

Melted like worship.

***

At the pool in July,

he read The Brothers Karamazov

under an umbrella that said PEPSI in six languages.

I was floating on a blue foam noodle,

so full of chlorine and longing

I almost confessed.

***

The radio played that one song

that sounds like hope if you’re young enough

or drunk enough

or underwater.

***

I sank to the bottom,

waited for him to jump in.

He never did.

Just hummed Prokofiev

while unpeeling a banana

like he was practicing restraint

in a language I didn’t speak.

***

Later, I caught him whispering to his reflection

in the back of a spoon.

He was explaining his regrets alphabetically.

“Anticipation. Barbershop mistakes. Chopin.”

He stopped at D.

Looked at me like I was a vowel he didn’t trust.

***

He said:

“I think love should sound like a dusty record player.”

I nodded.

Pretended not to hear the scratch

in my chest.

3. The Porcupine Who Loved Too Hard

Once,

he thought the ring would fix it.

He’d watched enough humans to believe in the ritual:

offer a ring, receive permanence.

Easy. Clean. Almost holy.

***

But no one told him

rings don’t work on people

who still flinch when they’re happy.

***

She was a raccoon with secrets in every pocket.

She never said goodbye.

Just stopped answering his smoke signals.

He sat by a mailbox for six weeks

and named the silence after her.

***

The ring no longer fits.

It waits on a stick like a retired miracle.

Sometimes it holds napkins.

Sometimes just memory.

***

He’s learned to cook.

Nothing fancy.

Mostly comfort food — grief and gravy,

sorrow slow-roasted until tender.

***

People pass him on the 8 all the time.

No one stops.

He’s too prickly.

Too weird.

Too honest.

***

But you —

you pull over.

Not because you love him,

but because you recognize him.

***

You, too, have loved someone who ghosted through a gesture.

You, too, have tried to use meaning as medicine.

You, too, have stared down a road and said:

***

“Maybe if I just become someone else by mile marker 93.”

***

You sit next to him,

ring between you like a dare.

The porcupine doesn’t speak,

but he hums something that sounds

like a lullaby

and a resignation letter.

***

You say,

“I thought commitment would be warmer.”

***

He nods.

Says,

“Everyone does.

Until they hold it too long.”

4. The Clam Chowder Is a Boy and the Mountains Are Watching and the Highway Is Tired of You

You said it was just a bowl of clam chowder.

But it wasn’t.

It never is.

***

It was steaming too poetically.

It was the kind of thick that held memory.

It had potatoes cut the way your mother never did.

It tasted like the thing you never got to say,

and every spoonful said it back to you

in silence.

***

The boy across the table said nothing.

He looked at you like commitment was a porcupine

trying to fit in his carry-on.

Spiky. Necessary. TSA-inappropriate.

He was already planning his exit.

You could hear it humming beneath his molars

like a diesel engine

or a hymn.

***

The world was behind you, yelling:

“Get it together.”

“Be a person.”

“Stop turning your dating life into experimental jazz.”

***

But you couldn’t help it.

You saw metaphors like constellations.

You needed the stars to mean something

because otherwise they were just gas fires above El Cajon,

and that was too lonely a thought to carry into summer.

***

He was not the first boy.

There was another.

There’s always another.

He was in the Navy.

Or maybe the idea of the Navy.

Tight corners. Rules. Regret with epaulettes.

He made you feel like a poem that failed its fitness test.

***

But this boy, the chowder boy,

he was leaving.

You both knew it.

You could feel the I-8 buzzing under the concrete of your hope,

leading out of the city like a spine with wanderlust.

You stared east.

Mountains like tired grandfathers.

Or judges.

***

You were never going to chase him.

You’re not that girl.

You’re the one who stays at the diner too long,

finishes the chowder,

leaves a tip in simile.

***

There were miles to go.

There are always miles to go.

You carry them like freckles.

You kiss boys like paper promises.

***

Somewhere, a porcupine is gnawing on a wedding ring.

Somewhere, a metaphor is whispering,

“You don’t need closure.

You just need a better soundtrack.”

***

And you —

you drive east

toward mountains

toward silence

toward something you can’t name

but that feels like

maybe

almost

not quite

home.

5. the boy with the jazz soul

the boy with the jazz soul

he never spoke in complete thoughts

only syncopation —

pauses shaped like longing,

eyes full of velvet saxophones

***

i saw his soul once

(it caught itself halfway through a blue note)

and it wasn’t gold

or fire

or stained glass regret

it was

brass & breath & hunger

like a trumpet left too long in the sun

making music without being asked to

***

he walked like sheet music in a windstorm

feet catching rhythm from cracks in the sidewalk

elbows brushing ghost notes off strangers’ coats

his ribs were an upright bass

humming through grief he never admitted

his knees bent in 3/4 time

even when he slept

***

i loved him in triplets

never even

never fair

***

his soul brushed against mine once —

accidentally,

in the cereal aisle

and my spine snapped like a snare drum

***

he did not notice

the melody never waited

***

he kissed me like a false start

left me like a chorus unresolved

but oh —

the color of him

the sound of him

still unbuttons my silence

still warps the clocks in my chest

***

he was not made for holding

he was made for hearing

and even now

years later

my bones still echo

the song he forgot to finish