Katy Hackworthy

Hope is an embrace which I’m learning takes many forms:

the elderly couple eating sandwiches over a kitchen sink, their love

encyclopedically etched into sagging faces, or the teens

tangled under a sizable spruce across the street, their tenderness

so delicate I have to look away, or the child forcing his face

into the cat’s fur, inviting the rough ritual of a tongue

traveling across his forehead, their bond becoming a promise.

We are all learning new methods of enveloping each other

without the tools of touch- we share poems in place

of firm squeezes, palm in palm, across the dinner table.

Instead of arms slung swiftly across shoulders, we share songs

to remedy all the ways we don’t know how to say “I love you”.

Our eyes entangle and instead of cradling a cheek in cupped hands,

or brushing loose locks behind an ear, we honor this new way

of holding each other the best we can, refusing to look away.

Katy Hackworthy is an organizer, caregiver, and writer. Her work has been featured in Barstow and Grand, twig, Volume One, NOTA, and Literally, Darling. She resides in Minneapolis with her cat, Long Walt, and a mountain of books.