_JPG.jpg)
Mike Bove
​
​
​
Air Between Them
​
She signs, framing words on stage, carving silence
into sight for those unable to hear & after, walks
the beach in chill, bends for a shell & thinks of working
without her closest colleague & friend. Shot dead
in Lewiston, he visits her at night, hands motionless,
mouthing sorry. At shoreline big waves curl. She shuts
her eyes to listen, to see how she might have formed
her face to make him see this sound, how to move
her hands. Alone on the sand she pulls emptiness, pushes
wind, a spell to summon spirits, filling the space around
her body & his, hollowed now & beyond her reach.
Eyes still closed, she can no longer tell the difference
between the roll of her wrists & the sound of the ocean,
& when she weeps it’s because she can see it & he can’t,
because she could hear his hands when he spoke, because
they both understood the invisible thing silently rising
in the air between them, soft thing their eyes held,
noiseless thing they heard as love.
​​
​
​
​
Mike Bove is the author of four books of poetry, most recently EYE (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). His poems have appeared in Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, and many others. He serves as a 2024 Writer-in-Residence at Acadia National Park and is Associate Editor for Hole in the Head Review. Mike lives with his family in Portland, Maine where he was born and raised. www.mikebove.com, Instagram: @portlandbove