My contact fell out the other day

and I suffered through class with half-sight

squinting around translucent shapes scattered across my vision

like the tension of water skaters drifting over a lake.

I felt as if I could pluck those smudges from the air

blow them away like dandelions.

Maybe that's what poetry is.

A blurred mess of reality,

one sensation bleeding into another

until you realize: everything is connected.

Poetry is standing at a concert

pressed up against bodies

and the thrum of excitement

and feeling the music vibrate through your spine.

Poetry is the stone of grief

that rests heavily in your stomach,

the anxiety that shoots its way out of your fingertips.

There is poetry in the way your heart

relocates to your throat.

It is baring yourself to others,

inviting them to inspectexaminejudge you

and coming to understand the beauty in

being picked apart.

Maybe poetry is

seeing the world

through one contact lens.