Alison Petrash-Hall

I convince myself.
I saw you perform for the first time,
and it felt like it meant something
particular, like my life would change.
Old ideas about who I would become
gasped back to life, still in graves.

My fascination is like everyone else’s.
By design, I know less about you than
the average fan, because it feels stupid
to know when your birthday is.
I know what a therapist would say—
the infatuation is symbolic.
There’s something about you
that I want for myself.

I keep my distance, emotionally, but
you are chest-hurtingly funny,
atoms arranged in a new permutation.
Formed with love by brilliant women.
Sweet singing sincerity, history,
wild and wicked wit, a thicket.
A poem and a spoonerism.
You carry pain so lovingly.

So I convince myself.
It’s not too late to grow new bones.
To become someone whose words
matter to someone like you,
make you feel something.
The Pleasure at Being the Cause.
It is so simple, so childlike, that it
makes me cry in the shower.

I remember belief.
My auto writing with Crayola markers.
The entoptic phenomena that I
can no longer see with adult eyes.
Ritualistic offerings to Santa Claus
to bring my dead dog back.
The message I wrote to someone,
anyone, congratulating them for
finding me, and threw into the
Gulf of Mexico in a plastic water bottle.

But that was mysticism, hallucination,
magical thinking, and pollution.
And I worry that this dream gripping
my heart, of ever getting to
be as loved as you, is delusional, and
I have to go back to work now.