This is a revision of a poem I posted earlier on r/OCPoetry. I figured I would post it here and save that subreddit for new poems, as it has stricter posting rules. Hope that's okay! My revisions mainly consist of adding more imagery to the poem to keep it grounded. I would love to hear what people think :)

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The Line Between Strange and Ordinary

Do you remember the last time I saw you,

sitting on the porch, your legs dangling over the edge?

You asked when you would see me again.

I don’t know, I replied, but soon, I hope.

Soon… Even now, the word sounds strange

upon my lips, but I can only hope, and wait.

​

After so long a time, would you still wait

for me on that sun-dappled, peeling porch? I think you

would. You understand as well as I do the strange

compulsion to dance so close to the edge,

to snap your fingers at reason and dare to hope

you won’t trip and fall, won’t bruise and bleed again.

​

Only let me hear your honey-warm voice again,

and I could stand forever as still as wallpaper, could wait

between brass bookends on the highest shelf, never giving up hope

that I might someday, somewhere, somehow see you

in more than memory’s glass without falling over the edge

into a churning ocean of dreams, fathomless and strange.

​

Were I to disappear in a wink, would you think it strange

that I penned no letter, gave no thought to come again

and leave my footprints in the grassy valley so far from the edge,

the dusty, worn, familiar place folks wander while they wait,

and do not even think it waiting, or wandering? No. You

know my story. You have folded the corners of its pages. Or do I only hope

​

that I’m full of your underlines and scribbled notes? Hope…

It’s a curious commodity, making ordinary things seem strange

but tricking the mind into believing stranger ones. Do you

understand? No. Confusion clouds your eyes like spilled ink. I’ll try again.

Hope is strange because it convinces us to cross our fingers and wait

in breathless anticipation, forgetting or ignoring the edge

​

that reason taught us to beware, the jagged, knife-sharp edge

made dangerous not by the threat of falling but by the hope

of flight, a dizzying ascent it dangles before those who wait

while humbler joys trundle past, those who seek something strange

in the misty twilight, rapt as moths beguiled by a lamp. Then again,

I need not explain the seductive danger of trusting the unknown to you.

​

If there is an expert in optimism, it is you, balanced above that edge

on tiptoes again, arms outstretched like a falcon’s wings, hunting the hope

that lurks on the line between strange and ordinary, content to wait.