The Blueprint
Amy Woolard | Poetry
If it isn’t one room, it will be another,
When you find your way back, chalking
The walls, the better to lose yourself again
My dear, there will always be something
That cannot be described exactly
As a room: a stairwell, a closet, a porch
With the one light left lit for you, &
If it isn’t in one room, it will be in another,
Curled up as a lost sonata, or a blueprint
For an entire town, its traffic bottlenecking
At the sight of you, how everything will seem the opposite
Of a hallway, it’s all coming back to me now,
Like too many parentheses, tulips will crowd each other
& me, as if in mute love with you, the wind
Will end up narrowing where I can walk,
All over town, girls will fall in love
With starvation, the sky—the sky—
Get it through that thick heart of yours,
It will all dead end at my door:
Player pianos will rewind themselves without hesitation
Or remorse, secret passageways will reveal themselves
As simple bookshelves after all, I will see you
In no one’s eyes, no one’s architecture.
Amy Woolard is a Senior Policy Attorney with Voices for Virginia’s Children, a public policy and advocacy organization focused on child well-being and poverty. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Fence, Smartish Pace, and Puerto del Sol. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Featured Image by Beto Galetto