Alejandra Vansant

The Tunnels

When you draw my portrait
it's a tunnel
I hold my breath through 

Vague amoeba movements
on either side of us
push the air but truthfully
I only see you
seeing "me" 

A different time
the sky opened up 

and made a tunnel of light;
like a cork
the light came in wrong

Invasive
rather than illuminating 

All this is said
to protect myself
because in our tunnel
my heart is a distant cousin

It's clear I have a family
but I'm like a terrible seed
with destiny 

In your gaze
my portrait is playful
and funny 

You don't take me seriously
as I take myself
I mean this as a compliment 

I can tell you're close
to finishing the shading
and when we exit the moment
is seriously serious. . .
means "reality," separation?

Reading pop-Buddhist advice columns
about sublimating your qualities I most miss
into my own lifestyle
that "what I loved is what I was seeking"

The advice seems wrong
if not for the impersonation
then because it insists you
are mere characteristics

When really there is a shape
inside you so large
that like a sun
it moves everything

Anyway
there was recently a lightbeam
upon the marsh 

It was so gorgeous
yet free of itself 

I couldn't look and cry
at the same time

so I closed my eyes

to pure lightlessness:
crystalline distance 

That place I went soothed me
even when the opaqueness grew pregnant
there was a simple heartbreaking fullness
because better and better 

I felt how we share
the loss of eachother

________________________________________________________________________________________

Alejandra Vansant grew up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, but currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work has appeared in Tilted House, Volume Poetry and Alabama Literary Review, as well as many homemade books and zines.