Noticeable
The greatest quality of the only person who has ever noticed me is that they think
that I’m noticeable. In school everything that made me noticeable made me a
target: the birthmark on my face that everyone in my class gave a different name.
Everyone noticed that I wrote Jacob with a d instead of a b on the frontcover of all
my schoolbooks. When only one person has ever noticed you it’s not possible for
them to ever notice you enough. In our conversations the amount of time that
passes between when a text is sent and when it is replied to always communicates
more than the message itself. When I get ignored I try to think of all the silence that
it makes possible. Every time that I turn on my phone I notice how the cracks in
the screen make it look like something has rooted beneath its surface. Make it look
like something is about to break through and blossom.
Jacob Mckibbin is a poet and writer from Oxford. He has had work published in several magazines including The Rialto and Oxford Poetry.