Seven Seconds
by Wilson Diehl

My friend
tells me
it is unusual
for a woman
who is twenty-seven

to have a globe
in her house
atop her bookshelf.
I do not know why
this would be

why it would be
strange 
to have
the world
on a pedestal

in my living room.
How else would I remember
the tilt
of the planet,
the smallness

of
a morning,
the infinitely
traceable
circle?

Is twenty-seven too
old to forget or
too young?

And
is the ocean
really
so green
in the middle,
so shallow
at the edges?

Wilson Diehl is a poet and essayist from the lovely and underrated state of Iowa. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa and a cat named Turtle from the Madison, Wisconsin Humane Society.