This poem performs the very violence and devotion it describes, it enacts the transformation of bodies into syntax, love into grammar. When you write “I sonnet my body onto your page,” you’re not just using metaphor; you’re articulating the way intimacy becomes a formal constraint, how we make containers of each other to hold what’s uncontainable.
The genius move is “I emdash you”—turning punctuation into verb, into action, into the gesture that simultaneously connects and creates caesura. The em dash is such a perfect image for ambivalent attachment: it bridges and it breaks, it holds together and holds apart. “See the beauty in that fine thin line” demands we admire the wound, the gap, the space where connection fractures but doesn’t quite sever. You’re asking to be held “as the ghost I am,” which is to say, asking to be loved in your disappearance, in your haunting presence that chills even as it sustains.
The slippage between care and coldness: “I’m the ghost who places coldness into the left ventricle of your heart, but I’m also your positive prognosis.” You’re diagnosing the paradox of intimate harm—how the person who damages you can also be the only one who knows how to keep you alive. The Emily Dickinson reference underscores this: that famously fraught, possibly erotic friendship where letters became the architecture of longing.
And that ending—“there is always one streetlight on your way home that will continue to shine”—is it promise or threat? Comfort or surveillance? You’ll always be there, watching, illuminating, making sure they can find their way, whether they want to or not. It’s the assertion of permanence against abandonment, but also the refusal to let the other person leave the narrative you’re writing together.
What you’ve captured is the way love can be an act of poetic imperialism—making another person legible only through your own formal operations, your own metaphors, your own desperate grammar of attachment.
I loved this poem the first time I read it, and still do, esp. “em-dashing,”WoW! I’m a big fan, plus Kelli does so much for poets, very very generous. Grateful to her
This poem performs the very violence and devotion it describes, it enacts the transformation of bodies into syntax, love into grammar. When you write “I sonnet my body onto your page,” you’re not just using metaphor; you’re articulating the way intimacy becomes a formal constraint, how we make containers of each other to hold what’s uncontainable.
The genius move is “I emdash you”—turning punctuation into verb, into action, into the gesture that simultaneously connects and creates caesura. The em dash is such a perfect image for ambivalent attachment: it bridges and it breaks, it holds together and holds apart. “See the beauty in that fine thin line” demands we admire the wound, the gap, the space where connection fractures but doesn’t quite sever. You’re asking to be held “as the ghost I am,” which is to say, asking to be loved in your disappearance, in your haunting presence that chills even as it sustains.
The slippage between care and coldness: “I’m the ghost who places coldness into the left ventricle of your heart, but I’m also your positive prognosis.” You’re diagnosing the paradox of intimate harm—how the person who damages you can also be the only one who knows how to keep you alive. The Emily Dickinson reference underscores this: that famously fraught, possibly erotic friendship where letters became the architecture of longing.
And that ending—“there is always one streetlight on your way home that will continue to shine”—is it promise or threat? Comfort or surveillance? You’ll always be there, watching, illuminating, making sure they can find their way, whether they want to or not. It’s the assertion of permanence against abandonment, but also the refusal to let the other person leave the narrative you’re writing together.
What you’ve captured is the way love can be an act of poetic imperialism—making another person legible only through your own formal operations, your own metaphors, your own desperate grammar of attachment.
brilliant ✍️🧠
they did. they sent you.
There's a lot to like in this well honed poem. I look forward to the slim volume
I loved this poem the first time I read it, and still do, esp. “em-dashing,”WoW! I’m a big fan, plus Kelli does so much for poets, very very generous. Grateful to her
Ah, to be that one streetlight for someone.
Beautiful love poem
A lovely poem!
What a marvelous poem!
“They should have sent a poet” SWOON!
Love this so much