Gemstones and Precious Metals

There are mountains in the rearview mirror.
You asked me yesterday    how long it takes to grow
a mountain    what is the lifespan
of a stone   if I loved you. I turned a pebble
over and over in my hand   my fingers a current
that longed to wear smooth its edges. 
If I loved you      I could stay.
It was always you   washing red desert dust
from your hair that reminded me
of burning forests   the charred carcass
of an evergreen. Once   you gave me 
raw quartz.   There was a day 
when the juice of a ripe prickly pear 
ran down your chin   when you suckled
its meat from the hard and spiny shell
I thought maybe       it should have been 
easier to love you.      When I left
I left precious metals on the bureau
a rock    that wasn’t a rock once
it was petrified wood           a letter.
Your footprint is still visible
when fog collects on my windshield. 
I want to ask you now    what the future looks like
without you   and which mountains are those
on the horizon.   I’ve always known so little.

The Slow, Slow, Slow Passing of Time

Standing at the window of all things, you are the body of the ocean, 
your hands are the tides cleaning dead things off the shore. 
Outside, there is a bus driver, driving a bus, 
somewhere. There is waitress, pouring and pouring
a cup of hot, black coffee. A person in a booth 
lifts the warm ceramic to their small mouth
and sips the dark insides like a bat 
drinking nectar from the bell of an evening blossom. 
Everybody seems to forgive themselves 
for so much needing—to bind the oxygen to carbon,
to turn the water into waste. Somewhere, a man 
eats too much ravioli, smokes a whole pack of cigarettes, 
fucks another man for seven and a half minutes. 
The world outside the window births excuse after excuse. 
You can trick yourself into living and then all of a sudden,
you’ve been alive all this time.

Samantha Imperi is a writer, editor, and instructor from Northeast Ohio. She received her MFA from the NEOMFA consortium program at the University of Akron in 2023 and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Ohio University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Allium, Pinch, Epiphany, and Portland Review, among others. Follow her on socials @simperi08 or visit www.samanthaimperi.net for more information.