Holding

With all that I have, I bargain  

Today we went swimming

Under a sun shining as if it always would

I held you, or at least I imagined it

Turned the record player on, swayed my hips

Wanting this moment to be longer

Yet I know, see it on your face

You would soon be gone

No more blues skies

My body numb again

If only you were more than a glimpse

Passing by like a familiar stranger

I thought I knew you once, perhaps in a dream

Holding onto a thread, falling into the abyss

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Holding meditates on the ache of impermanence in love and longing — suspending a fleeting moment of warmth against the knowledge of loss, where desire reaches toward what can never fully remain.