Living Alone

The insistence of the hour that hangs 

like a window unit 

from the backside of the building 

which reveals late 

summer's lattice-work, 

the markings of a comet, galaxies’ silhouettes. 

It is there the lightning bug also craves 

existence. Another summer, when I saw you  

through the solemn antenna 

of the one who, by living alone, makes fire 

with their body. It was that essence. 

I am a cowboy for the blue-black sky. 

You knew it then, at least I thought, shaking  

as you were in your skin. 

I am the one who watches me watching me now.

---

Nicole Stockburger is the author of Nowhere Beulah (Unicorn Press, 2019) and has published poetry in Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Humanities Review, Cimarron, and elsewhere. She is currently a PhD Candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.