not the real thing, just what bounces off, surface-sent—mirrors,
eyes give her back as what she isn’t quite—light scared off,
reconfigured as her double, creeping close, asymptote
but never really her. Darker right eye becomes her left.
Hand pointing east to quell twitch around mouth points west.
Imprint she makes in an iris too weak, loses fire, stamps
frown on both sides of the coin she circulates as—failed
copy. Only emissary. One you sang everything to. One
you saw in dreams, woke beside, saw each time you saw,
uttered all confessions to. What do you call the part of me
that heard? Part the words echoed through: valley. Place two hills define.
Outline chalked in skin, filled with ghost. Air that only takes up
space it lets sound pass through. Form: lyre’s inside. Nothing
to paint. Is of was. Resonator, sounding. But not the sound.
Ali Beheler’s work can be found in Tupelo Quarterly, ballast journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Willows Wept Review, and elsewhere. Her work has won the SRPR Editor’s Prize (2024) and honorable mention in the Rash Poetry Awards (2024). She attended The Kenyon Review’s juried Online Summer Writer’s Workshop in Poetry (2023) and was a writer-in-residence at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony (2022 & 2023). She teaches at Hastings College in Hastings, NE. Find her at www.alibeheler.com.