Annie Przypyszny | poetry | Between Us

Between Us

You like my dark, love-tangled hair 
and the way I forsake silence. I like 

your silver-blue eyes
and your absence 

of fault-finding, though I’m faulty 
as the crust of the earth. 
I took a geosystems class in the eleventh grade –

I know a thing or two 
about this world and its ever-shifting 

plates; for example, we are standing 
on the same plate, shifting

in the same direction, I on my tip-toes
and you on the whole of your feet. 
You are kissing me, a cordial, 

breathy greeting. You like 
that I don’t think twice 

before singing, and I like
how you answer my questions:

how long do we get to keep going
like this? Maybe that one’s

a stumper. Unfair. I’ll switch
the topic. I’ll explain to you form, 

and line, and meter, and you’ll explain to me
why we can’t just print more money
to fix the economy. Explaining things

is almost the same as telling the truth.
Last month we wandered around
the Natural History Museum, 

ended up in front of the preserved giant squid.
As we stared at her (so Snow White-like

in her glass case, so peculiarly enchanting),
you said you thought she would be larger

than that. In my eyes, she was bigger
than I ever could have dreamed. I like

that this discrepancy could exist 
as just another thread between us:
two lovers look at a squid

and see two different squids.
Two lovers look at their future 

and see two different squids.

**2024 Pushcart nominee