By Ariel Yelen

I’ve always been obsessed with people—
whether or not I know them. Obsessed
by our knowledge of each other, the quality

of connection, our friendship or non-friendship,
its relation to other connections. Obsessed
by the way a new connection can change pre-existing

ones, reorder them, renew them, fine-tune
or disappear them. By the light pressure
of an other’s existence, which in turn grows

me. Obsessed by memory and lack of memory
for the way things were—I don’t think I’d recognize
you if I saw you on the street, though in the past

so obsessed I thought almost everyone
was you. Obsessed with leaving people
so I can obsess about them again.

By thinking with and through people, dead
and alive, without whom I’d be a different person,
think different thoughts. Even obsessed

with the version of me I don’t know, walking around
having met different people, thinking different
thoughts, moving in a different direction, away

from people and toward the self,
or the desert, or the sea, or the god, or the page, or the mountain,
or the canyon, or the forest, or the dark.

Poet Bio

Ariel Yelen’s poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, BOMB, Conjunctions, Washington Square Review, and other journals. She holds an MFA from Rutgers University–Newark and serves as the associate editor for Futurepoem, where she also edits the blog future feed. She lives in Brooklyn. See More By This Poet