Mirages
Ben Cooper
Ben Cooper is a poet studying creative writing at Salisbury University. He won the 2025 AWP Intro Journals Award, works as a managing editor at 149 Review, and is published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, The Penn Review, The Shore, Atlanta Review, Saranac Review, Frontier Poetry, and more. Find him on Twitter/X at @BenCooperPoetry.
Go ahead, put your hand in
the fire. Hold it. Take
comfort in the invisible
part of the flame as it flicks
in and out of shape. Let it hold
your body within itself, everything else
crumbling around you. Here, the skin
tends to get a bit messy. Take it off
before you get too comfortable. Look
at yourself. Laid bare, it’s easier
to see. Both you and the flame
are the same. There. Here. But neither
of you exist just yet. Neither of you will
get the chance to taste the blue
of the sky—neither able to be extinguished
by the water floating just below
the shimmering horizon. See how
it evades you—how it ripples just past
the reach of your scarred fingerprints.