A Contemplation Upon Curls Poem by Abby Koning

Your gentle and tentative fingers curl
Softly about my own
Reminiscent of the curls
Falling about your downturned face
And, what is a curl, really?
Not quite a circle, not quite a square
Not quite anything, truly

And what are we?
Not who, but what
For I know who we are
You are a boy and I a girl
A man, a woman
With hands interlaced and hearts
Entwined
In that shape that was not among the shapes
I learned so studiously in school

And if I was a little more wise
A little more worldly
A little more like something
And a little less like nothing
Perhaps then I could discover what we are
And with that knowledge I could begin to uncover
Why.

Why is the question that goes too often
Unanswered

So, by a scientific method, what are we?
The same as who, a boy and a girl
A man, a woman.
For what defines who we are.
Towers of blood, flesh, muscle
And when we kiss, what is that?
A pressing of chapped lips upon
Those of another’s
Eyes framed with lashes closing
And hearts deep down beating faster.
Is that a Kiss?

But it must be more than that.
Science is not all-knowing, but then
What, What, What, What, What!
Lovers?
Is that all that we are?
Two people fighting to retain a tiny bit
Of Companionship
In a world that all too often thrusts us
Into loneliness?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps what we are is
Indefinable by words or thoughts
Only existing for one purpose:
To exist.
And only worth noticing because
We exist.
And perhaps, when the day is done
We mean only as much to the world as
A single, withered leaf in a vast forest
Or, even less, for when the leaf is dead
It will never come back
But once We are no longer We
Each one of us will linger on, separate,
Unwanted
By each other
By the world

But for now, our hands are still together
And we are defined by each other
‘We’ is so much less lonely than
‘I’ or ‘You’ or ‘He’ or ‘She’
And we are nothing more than curls
Existing, but not meant to be known
Or studied
Or admired.
Not quite circles.
Not quite squares.
Not quite anything at all.