THE SPACE BETWEEN
This entire day
I have felt
just a few seconds
separated from myself.
Stepping outside
I close the door upon my foot.
The glass on the table
is moments away
from the water I pour.
I speak words
that sound foreign
even to me;
said too early,
or perhaps too late.
The tenderness
I thought I felt
is gone
before my hand
ever reaches your arm.
—from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems
__________
Jill Jupen: “I have been writing poems since I was five. I met the poet Hayden Carruth when I was eighteen and he said, ‘Write.’ He stuck with me until the day he died, reading everything I sent him. Sometimes he would send my work out and it would be published. I’ve decided he would want me to keep sending it out.”
