• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Bailys Beads

  • Home
  • About
    • Awards
    • Writing at Pitt-Bradford
  • Submissions
    • Contests and Special Features
  • Contributors
  • Special Features
    • Spring 2021 Special Music Feature
  • 2021 Edition
    • Artwork
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
    • Editorial Note
    • Editorial Staff
  • Past Issues
    • 2020
    • 2019
    • 2018
    • 2016
    • 2015
    • 2013
    • 2012

Hello

By Connor Horton

I turned the dial, and it began. A
clatter of noise, like coarse stones
dragged across a plain of silence
before the waters rose and flooded
my world with colors.
 
The hues, they shifted and scattered
into white space as words and tones
became paved stones and a smiling
face, tears in memoriam of worlds
lost and stories told.
 
Rain fell on grass fields while along the
road leaves fell and memories marched
by with old broken barns and hay bales.
Cattle raised their heads as if to greet
me, and the rhythm moved in a dance
that only she and I could possibly see.
 
The outline of her young face broke
from the glassy waters of my mind
before the lights shifted and we
were together again, holding hands
on the way to class. The hallway
lights and school tiles blurred. Then
petrichor, sweet and bitter and alive
as rain like the drums of this song
played against the roof of my old
car while we made love,
deep, nestled within the folds of autumn.
 
I pulled into her driveway. In
the dusk the headlights faded
as the dash radio switched off.
 
But in my mind the music still lingered
like scraps of some ancient hope, some
age-old passion wisened, perhaps, into
love. I walked over brittle leaves and
rapped on her door. It pulled open, and
there was her face, a pale and weathered
orb against the dim.
 
Her eyes, brown and tightened by forty years, were as alive 
and shining as those times. 
Her lips pulled into a smile, 
and I realized in 
those brief moments that she was as
 beautiful as I remembered.
She said, “Hello.”

Filed Under: 2021 Issue, Poetry

Footer

Contact Bailys Beads

bailys@pitt.edu

Bradford Writes

Pitt-Bradford’s first year writing program’s new publication features our best student writing from our composition classes. Learn more at BradfordWrites.com.

Copyright 2020 · Baily's Beads | University of Pittsburgh at Bradford | 300 Campus Drive | Bradford, PA 16701