february 27 2024

(submission)

February 2022
Meghan Gagliardi

On her Norwegian deathbed we claimed Marianne as our patron saint. She was exalted by many but loved only by those of us who have likewise pined ourselves into oblivion standing at the edge of an island skin screaming in the sun and longing for someone who’d rather be elsewhere and without us. Like a rite of passage we held our lovers’ babies in our hands and lifted them towards the sky—oh how we delighted in the children, we aborted the babies they didn’t want, we took the medicine, we opened our mouths to demonstrate our love, we let them look all the way down our throats, we conceded in the name of art, we made concessions so that they should live absolutely well with or without us, we set up their homes, we pulled the loose threads from the linens, when we found ourselves caught off guard by marriage we sent little notes of gratitude and purpose, we arranged the flowers, we were vacations, we changed our travel plans on their whim, we wept in secret at the airport and when we were finished with our weeping we walked back to the gate and smiled in our seats, we let them fly very far to say very little, we neglected others who promised to love us better, we were a means to an end but only in the worst of times, we listened to the guilt-infused pronouncements they were performances they became so empty we had to fill them too

it took a lot out of us
the ask always asking too much
so they overstate our importance as a kind of consolation

or as a veil for something more sinister 
to get at what’s already been given freely
to get at what’s already run dry

we were promised love, if nothing else
and instead they gave us nothing

and the nothing mounts—eerie in its expansiveness
all that nothing it takes me to the very edge of my mind
and it’s a dangerous place, that edge.

I feel the edge creeping in 
sleepless from pining I watch the dawn from the panoramic window

I move around the house while the others sleep
I walk the door to paradise 
I stand at its edge 

I watch the sunrise and surrender to its perceptual limit 
and the lucidity of this great distance I have achieved 
amplifies the limit and makes me nauseous

the limit is making me sick

and in this very human state I admonish myself:
can’t I go anywhere without longing for what I am without?

I’ve pined everywhere I’ve been 
I cried so hard into the sea I threw up and forgot that I knew how to swim, 
my body rejoicing in the opportunity to take me under

as punishment, I suppose, for being so reckless. 

I wanted to be more beautiful for so many of them
I ached to be sweeter to the women, as consolation 
or as a veil for something more sinister. 

I moved out of the house and moved on even when it felt futile, 
moved out of the house in such a serious way, so far gone 
that there was nowhere left to go

and nothing left to do 
but to make the stupid pilgrimage 

the dawn the door the paradise 
propelled by the momentum of promise

and nothing left to do 
but to take the ride.