Fibonacci Spiral

Erin Emily Ann Vance

I was a fiddlehead with dew-drip tendrils

curled into your warm mud,

suspended, web-like for those hours.

Did you know that the angle

at which a hawk approaches its prey

is the pitch of a Fibonacci spiral?

Our tongues stretched into that same

sacred pattern when we said goodbye.

Did you know that we can’t help

but seek patterns, platitudes?

That we will find meaning in nothing,

every single time.

So, tell me,

what does it mean when the airplane

hits turbulence and it pitches me into the aisle

and I see your lips airbrushed onto strangers?

While you’re fingering the snow capped slopes of the Andes,

will you remember your fingertips on my throat?

AUTHOR BIO

Erin Emily Ann Vance is the author of the poetry collection A History of Touch (Guernica Editions 2022) and the novella Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers (Stonehouse Publishing 2019). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in magazines and journals all over the world, including Contemporary Verse 2, The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause, ARC, EVENT, and The Literary Review of Canada. Vance holds a Masters Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary as well as a Masters Degree in Irish Folklore and Ethnology from University College Dublin.