Love Note to Say Goodbye – Laura Sweeney
Yes, you were intense as incense,
both elegance and coherence, a bull
to my china shop, the red to my pepper,
the miel to my chamo tea. But you wrote
me off as a bohemian storm. Never mind
that I was gibberish to your jarble,
the spark to your spur, the spit to your fire.
I don’t accept that I am not high
literature. Though I want to be read
like low art. Worth your inconvenience,
like fine wine and womanhood. More
a becoming than a whim, more a destiny
than a decision. So, I will relinquish
though I relished you, like the kite that
drifted away at the Fest, like the ever
to the green we decorated at Christmas,
like the garnet that fell from my ring,
like the tray to the ashes I’m burning.
Darling, I don’t dwell, I declutter.
Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist’s Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her recent poems appear in Pilgrimage, Appalachia, Potomac Review, Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ithaclit, St. Katherine’s Review, Amethyst Review, and Descant. Her recent awards include a residency at Sundress Publication’s Firefly Farms, and a scholarship to attend the 2019 Sewanee Writers Conference.
