almost (adv)

after Amy Wolstenholme

 

A friend says the most essential

words in our gut are never truly accessed,

 

like the words in a dictionary, amidst which

we search often for flabbergasted (verb)

or bamboozled (verb), but never almost (adv):

 

we almost always miss it by an almond

(noun), alopecia (noun) or an alpaca (noun),

 

like very nearly everything else; like love,

loss; like death, illness or an absence;

 

like your presence, when you used to be here.

 

 

Jayant Kashyap is the author of Survival (Clare Songbirds, 2019) and Unaccomplished Cities (Ghost City Press, upcoming). His poetry, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in Barren, StepAway, Visual Verse, Perverse, Outcast and other magazines, and has won and been commended in challenges on The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network and elsewhere. He is one of the founding editors of the e-magazine Bold + Italic and goes (everywhere) with the username @jaydkash.