Hannah Jacqueline Gray

it’s like that moment on a swing,
reaching the highest point,
that feeling in your stomach where
you feel suspended in the stale air,
about to fall and crumple to the ground,
a body on the concrete.

that inky blackness—but something
innocuous—a sort of weight pressing against you.
or maybe it’s coming from inside you:
a blurry dread spreading from your heart,
or maybe your head,
through your hands, the hands you use
to hold everyone but yourself, the hands you use
to turn off your phone and pretend, 
pretend like you didn’t see anything.

but still, it’s innocuous; 
it’s suspense, ink, a blurring inside you:
you can
pretend like 
it isn’t there.

Hannah Jacqueline Gray is an aspiring poet from a small town in Wisconsin. She loves reading and writing about small, everyday moments and the emotion within them. “[I]t's like that moment on a swing” is her debut piece.