Mid-April Rumination
by Sophia Fortunato
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Sophia is a rising Senior at the University of Michigan double majoring in Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies. Outside of class she volunteers at the county's Domestic Violence Shelter, works for the campus Sexual Assault and Prevention Center, cooks dinner for friends, and feeds the squirrels outside of her apartment. She has always enjoyed both creating and consuming visual and written works of art, and Quirk is her first time being published!
Mid-April Rumination
A poem about touch
It’s tired and overdone and everyone’s heard it
but you write it anyway
for the friends you can’t hug
each one of them with their own squeeze
because you can’t wait until your bodies can collide
because you yearn for that impact, contact
to be packed together like all of those dance floors
back when anonymous bodies could be neutral
and you could lose sense of the boundary
between you and them
before us and them
so you write it anyway
for your lover
because your body aches as much as your heart and mind
knows what she wants, knows that she can’t have it
knows what it's like to be held and is tired of her own arms wrapping around her own ribs
her own fingers running over her own thighs and sweeping aside her own hair
write it for the sun who warms you up while you eat your toast and sip your coffee
write it for the rain that drips onto your legs as you finish your run
write it for the trees that let you press your palm into their bark and hold their new leaves
and don’t recoil
write it even as your hands clench to remind you that you have this sense
write to say that you will be able to touch again
you will be able to touch again
you will
Promise
Interview With The Author
1. What was your inspiration for this piece?
This poem sprung out of early pandemic withdrawals from touch and human connection. I was at home with my family, separated from my friend and now boyfriend, and only able to see my friends from home at a distance. I am a very physically affectionate person––big Italian family––and so not being able to hug my friends and family was really heartbreaking. This poem was part rant, part mantra, part self-soothing.
2. What is your creative process?
When I write poems it's because I have some emotion that I need to get out and it feels like there is no other way to do it. I don't write often and rarely edit and it is truly just a therapeutic personal practice. When I do create a poem I am usually stewing in my emotions and a fragment of a line comes to me that seems to capture how I am feeling and then I feel compelled to expand upon it until I feel done.
3. What are some influences on your artistic process?
My art teachers from throughout my childhood influence my writing process. Although they were all visual artists they taught me lessons that transcend medium and guide me in my process. From them I learned to just put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) and get something down, whether it's just a scribble, or an incoherent string of words, or a whole fleshed out piece. It is the doing, the making, that feeds the soul.
4. Is there anything more you’d like our readers/viewers to know about you or your work?
I don't believe that my poetry is a technical or literary masterpiece; but I do hope that they convey the emotions––often melancholy, sometimes fear, joy, rage––that I feel while writing them and that readers can engage with that emotion in ways that move them.