Sonnet Phelps

Romantic and platonic aren’t organizing categories of relationships — they aren’t even poles on a spectrum.

That climactic release I’ve always looked for: This time, we may not be able to manufacture it. But I’m beginning to think that, just like the other kind of blue balls, the anticlimax we feel will dissipate.

I think feelings and moments collect in the places where we have them: They hang in the air, thick and invisible, for us to walk back through.

But in a world where the things we buy feel sleek, impenetrable and eventually disposable — and the strain on the Earth’s resources feels increasingly dire — fixing our stuff can be an act of defiance.

A meta-retrospective: looking back on a couple of poems I’ve written over the past several years about looking backward.

Crossing Ridge Road, the restaurants and stores fall away and are replaced by apartment buildings and small houses, pushed right up against the sidewalk.