by Marissa Glover
All in by Marissa Glover
by Marissa Glover
So this is the phone call, the email
in the dark hours after everyone’s gone
to bed, glass of wine on the nightstand still
half full, words important as air.
This is the song Kings of Leon sings—
the melancholy one, the one that ends
with a smile, the one your wife plays
in the shower because she doesn’t know
what it means. This is the apology—
an I’m sorry to appease the angels,
bypass the flaming swords barring us
from Eden, put the fruit back on the tree.
This is the sold sign planted in mud,
telling Shropshire the flat’s been taken.
This is the job ad for a man who loves
making plans, who teases fact from fog
the way chefs on Chopped cook complete
meals from whatever mystery ingredients
are in the basket, the way Fred Astaire
dances on the ceiling. This is the history
book teachers warn their class to read
with suspicion, eyes in search of bias
that leads to lies, penned by a poet
compelled to change the past, certain
a few good lines could write the future,
certain a future waits to be written,
certain the only story that ends happily
is the one that never ends.
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Marissa Glover teaches and writes in Florida, where she is co-editor of Orange Blossom Review and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Marissa’s work appears in Rust + Moth, Mothers Always Write, Okay Donkey, and Whale Road Review, among other journals. Her debut poetry collection LET GO OF THE HANDS YOU HOLD is forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2021. Follow Marissa on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.
by Marissa Glover
When we let go of anything, it’s always with the secret hope
that whatever we once held will one day come back to us.
This is a truth we don’t like to admit, even to ourselves.
We want to think we’re being generous or zen or wise,
when we move from the marital bed into the guest room.
But deep down we dream of a future return, some kind
of restoration; otherwise we’d never let go—
not of our small child’s hand, not of a lover who’s eager
to be someplace else, not of the happy dream that life could be better.
We treat our teaching job and our son’s school and a kiss goodbye
like waiting rooms, a temporary holding place for everything we love,
trusting that we will get it all back soon enough—healthy, whole.
But when the thing does not return, the truth we wouldn’t admit
is made clear. We let it go and wanted it to stay and it was always both,
at the same time. When the email notification says my points are expiring—
a CVS coupon, Old Navy Super Cash, BWW Blazin’ Rewards,
I want to rush out and buy something; it doesn’t matter what. I just can’t
bear to lose anything else. Not again. Not today. Not even 300 points.
Life is a series of repeated starts and stops; my time is measured
in the opening and closing of blinds, white wood slats on box windows
and the drawing of slate gray curtains across sliding glass doors.
Every morning opens, every evening closes—this day the same
as the day before. It’s hard not to wonder what’s the point.
My son’s hands are bigger than mine now—he holds his phone
a basketball, a pencil with no eraser. He doesn’t yet know
that his hands will never be big enough or strong enough.
I don’t have an answer when he asks why I let go of Daddy’s hand,
why I walked out. I think maybe I made a mistake because now
there’s no one here but me to close the curtains. No one but me
to ready the house for sleep. This life is not much different
from the life I kissed goodbye years ago, exhausted,
thinking it would someday return to me—healthy, whole.
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