THE HUG
by James Crews
The Hug
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The other night at the bookstore,
everyone masked, keeping their distance,
I ran into a friend and asked if I could
give her a hug, and something relaxed
in her face, her whole body, as we
leaned in, held each other closer a while.
She was wearing the slightly oversized,
bright red cardigan that once belonged
to her grandfather, and which she usually
keeps in the closet to remember him.
I pressed my face into the fabric,
breathing in, grateful to be touched
and to touch again. No surprise then, as I
learned recently, that when we’re forming
in the womb, the first signs of our arms
are these tiny buds that grow directly
from the heart, branching out. As my friend
and I parted ways that night, I felt
a blooming in my chest, like a tulip
easing open the hinges of its petals
on the first warm morning of a spring
I thought might never come.
James Crews’ work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and The New Republic, as well as on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in Writing & Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is the author of four collections of award-winning poetry, including The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize and Foreword Book of the Year Citation, 2011), Telling My Father (Cowles Prize, 2017), Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of several anthologies of poetry: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection; and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. He leads Mindfulness & Writing retreats online and throughout the country, and works as a creative coach with groups and individuals. He lives with his husband, Brad Peacock, in Shaftsbury, Vermont.
*James Crews has given us permission to publish this poem.
