Probably, Then

                I’m interested in the half-finished.
                    — Luisa A. Igloria

If I lived in a forest and you lived somewhere else, maybe in the forest, maybe not, no difference, just somewhere else, with a different language, and you found me in my forest and we had to talk, had to find out if the other was dangerous, I would point at a waterfall and say, maybe, waterfall and you would say, la fin du monde. We’d stand there looking at each other as if we were talking about the thing or maybe what we wanted from the other. We’d probably point to a few more things. It would feel important. Like the end of the world or maybe like the world itself. Probably, then, we’d realize the world is big. Much bigger than either of us had anticipated, and one of us, without doubt, would walk away.

Christian Anton Gerard has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and an Academy of American Poets prize. He has recent work in Poetry East, Faultline, and Waccamaw, among others, and lives in Knoxville.