Paige Sullivan

The Fountain

I dreamed you up, mirage.
Gold ginkgo feathers delicately
blanketing the sidewalk,
too beautiful to be brown-bagged.
I made an idea out of you, your body,
studied as many pictures as I could find,
imagined your soft and hard parts,
like marble sourced from north of here.
I stretched across my bed, cold inside.
I held the cat and then the dog.
I leave the Christmas lights on all day, wait
eleven months for a good one, and it’s not much.
You were gone, you were never here, the world is still.
All the things I don’t know just mean I’m stupid.
All those leaves so earnest and open, like a palm,
like a hand with fingers spread, like a salutation.
Like something that comes then goes.

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Paige Sullivan is a poet and writer living in Atlanta. A graduate of the creative writing programs at Agnes Scott College and Georgia State University, her work has appeared or will soon appear in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Cherry Tree and other journals.