By Sara Collie
I am 10 or 11, navigating some pre-teen cusp
of selfhood when the question rises up,
engulfs me,
troubling
that long sunstroked lunch outside the Cornish pub
under the looming cliffs
where I watch the waitress tuck her hair neatly
behind her ears, revealing a pair of yin yang earrings.
Small and perfectly formed,
they draw my focus
away from the Specials she is listing
with disinterest. I don’t
remember
what I ate, just those earrings and the curve
of her neck
knocking me off balance
as the question coalesces,
somewhere in my middle,
a harbinger,
not yet fully formed as is it her earrings that I like or her?
No, it is something vaguer that day,
something fluid—dazzling—
that simply asks when?
When?
Sara Collie (she/her) is a U.K.-based poet and writer with a Ph.D. in French Literature and a lifelong fascination with the way that words and stories shape and define us. Her writing explores the wild, uncertain spaces of nature, the complexities of mental health, queer identity, and the mysteries of the creative process.