Common Cause by Bob Hicok

"Always not knowing what you want but wanting it anyway."

Common Cause
by Bob Hicok

You go to work. People rub against you 
like fleece or wood rasps. You rub against people 
like nails or a cloud. You come home softer, 
bleeding. You do this a hundred years or so 
then retire. You're like everyone else 
in how different you are from everyone else. 
How alike. Your love of comforters and klezmer. 
Your fear of dying and living too long.
Your breath visits and leaves, visits and leaves. 
You're all it wants and too much to take. 
The tide understands. The moon. Other things 
that must go to stay. The mind understands,  
the soul. If lucky, you fall in love 
with the intangible shadows of a glance. 
The manner in which a man pets a cat. 
How a woman says hello as if opening a door. 
And always not knowing what you want 
but wanting it anyway. The haunting of desire.
To be held for years in the arms of a favorite shirt. 
To row a boat to an island in a dream. 
To be saved by a crow who lets you fix its broken wing.
To hear the machinery of the universe at work 
in the click of a spoon you set on the counter 
after a bite of something cool and clear, starlight 
or frozen yogurt. The opposite of love isn't hate 
but entropy, the going and going and going 
to sleep. And language exists 
so we can express the feeling 
that we've been here before 
to people who share our doubts 
that any of this is real.

Breathe (Copper Canyon Press, 2026)