This Moment // Because you took Wayne instead of Lakewood. Because after the storm waned, and the temperature dropped, you walked up, in enough time to stop at Ellie’s the coffeeshop with the terrible hours. And then it was suddenly late. And because the traffic was calm, and you never took the phone call or the alleyway, on your way back home from Aldi Grocery. But instead, took the main road, past the two-flat, with the brown mixed breeds— that race to the iron gate and snap at the back of your heels. Because your friend didn’t invite you to the show, and your neighbor stopped you suddenly, on the porch, to talk about their week, apple picking in Michigan— This very moment is ours! This moment. This moment. \\ Yesterday has gone. Tomorrow has yet arrived. All we have is this moment right now: me glancing occasionally at boats, writing these words to you, you hunched over this poem, reading these words from me— across years, and years, still, I’ll never give up this moment with you. // This is the very moment you have —this moment swelling like a bulb before your eyes, holding sun slowly illuminating the blinds. Do you hear the wren through the thin window-glass? This is the moment you’re holding air in your lungs, in whatever condition, you’re alive, you’re alive. Lean in close, let me whisper some- thing very important into your ear —you’ve arrived, you’ve arrived.
Ahrend Torrey is the author of Ripples (Pinyon Publishing, 2023), Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022), and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared in storySouth, The Greensboro Review, and West Trade Review, among others. He earned his MA/MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is a recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press. He lives in Chicago with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl their cat.
Amethyst Review 