The law of conservation states that energy in an isolated system
will remain constant over time
It is day 2 of post-graduate reality: alreadyyou are lonely
Your hair is choppy around your forehead from where
you trimmed it yourself
in a moment of desperation, wanting to feel
like you had control over something, wanting to use your hands
in an act of creationor destruction,
knowing that any change you make will revert backto how it was before
Miracle of May: 8 p.m. and still light out,
mourning doves supplying the saddest sound bath in the world
You sit on the swinging bench outside the building
where you met S, where you both lived,
where you kissed for the first time,
where, right after, you ran out into the hall
pounding heart
and talked yourself downin front of the dorm bathroom mirror
So many of your memories here are footnotes
in a story full of minor plot details and side characters, the trivialities
of learning
to speak with intention and honesty:
the marginaliaof what makes a life
Sometimes, it’s hard to remember what actually happened,
not what should have or almost did,
but the crystallized, savory momentsworth documenting
chicken-scratched onto empty pages
Outside, a groundhog emerges from behind the largest dumpster
you have ever seen—one of several parked haphazardly
on the green lawns of white apartments,
like a rusted 8-foot-tall meteorthat crash-landed on earth
to fulfill its divine calling:
swallowing unwanted furniture, shower shoes,
broken microwaves
You take inventoryof the wreckage,
the debris of the abandoned,try to predict the faces of those who will live
in your room, in S’s room,whether they will ever meet,
ever fold their lives into each otherthe way you did, and do
Above you: gray clouds with purple at the edges,a warning
of a summer storm,something to wash away the grief
You and the sky like two halves of a whole, Em Townsend is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Astronaut of Loss (Alien Buddha Press, 2025) and growing forwards / growing backwards (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Featured work appears or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, ONE ART, Vagabond City, Gone Lawn, Chestnut Review, Verse Daily, West Trade Review, Frozen Sea, and elsewhere. Read more: townsend31.wixsite.com/emtownsend. Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
both about to break—if not open, then apart
Heavy Feather Review 