Kimberly Kralowec

[We listen to candlelight burning, thin]

We listen to candlelight burning, thin
as the shadow of fire. Our breath is foreseen—
but I cannot speak to you with lungs alone
or without my hands. We change
each other’s names—to a kind of unbreathing:
as tulips might dismantle the storm
and convert it to stem. The seasons 
are unheard, traveling through. 
There’s a distance between the shift 
in the air          and when we perceive it.

Kimberly Kralowec is the author of a chapbook, We Retreat into the Stillness of Our Own Bones (Tolsun Books, forthcoming May 2022). A lawyer by profession, she holds a J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, and an English degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Her awards include the Patrick J. Hopkins Memorial Writing Award and the F.S. Jennings Prize in Expository Writing. Originally from a small town in the San Joaquin Valley, she now lives in San Francisco and has been named one of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Night Heron Barks, High Shelf, Star 82 Review, Birdland, and West Trestle Review.

Learn more about Kim at her poetry blog, http://www.anapoetics.com, and her law blog, http://www.uclpractitioner.com.