2024 Portrait Prize Third Place Winner: “the one where I watch you walk back into the room” By Allison Norwood
It’s time to congratulate the Third Place Winner of Frontier Poetry‘s 2024 Portrait Prize Contest, Allison Norwood. Read their affectionately commemorative poem, selected by our editorial team, “the one where I watch you walk back into the room.”
Watch as Norwood unwinds the tape of a nexus of quietly, intimate moments between themselves and the loved one they’re writing to life.
the one where I watch you walk back into the room
snow spiraling up
outside the window
as light bends, refracting
on the glass like a prism
a shattered spectrum
of color spills across the floor
we unhug
settle back into the couch
frozen in time, yet somehow still moving
in a snowglobe held upside down
i press the joint into the V of your fingers
inhaling a cloud
this time, i don’t leave for baltimore
the morning after christmas
on a greyhound bus
this time, it isn’t the last time
i see wrinkles fractal
across your face when you laugh
strange, how rewound laughter
looks almost exactly the same –
a palindrome of joy
blink, and the scene shifts
now we’re driving backward
faster than i’d like
worn tires over snow-stitched roads
its ruby ember sucking in smoke
as you lean toward me, mouth open
to tell me something important
most likely about music
or god. i want to listen, but i have to
blink. and we’re in a cemetery
unsmoking another and it’s ironic
but not in a funny way
and you seem to know this –
solemn as the stone
beneath your fingers
tracing names, asking who
they might have been, or become
so i can conjure stories
temporarily resurrecting
the dead.
as i’m doing now.
Allison Norwood
Allison Norwood is a queer, autistic poet living in the Midwest. A lifelong lover of language, she recently began sharing her poetry after writing privately for years. When not perched at her computer, she is likely exploring the forests, beaches, and rural landscapes of West Michigan, getting to know the local plants, fungi, and wildlife. She is passionate about her work in early childhood education, and lives with her spouse, two cats, and numerous succulents.
