Red Camelias

                        after Marie Howe

by Ronna Magy


Kitchen sink clogged for days,
crusty dishes long in a pile. Delft oatmeal
bowl, silver stirring spoon, half-sipped
Gatorade, ice blue.
Wooden blinds seal the living room
dark.
 
I’ve been thinking. This is what we do
on the path to leaving. I’ve thought it
often the past few days.
When she said she couldn’t eat,
couldn’t sleep, felt alone
without her wife, shivered, afraid,
though she couldn’t say she
wanted death.
 
It’s January. I’m not sure another
spring will come for her, another
time of red camelias and pink azaleas
blooming outside that door.
 
But at moments, I catch myself
motioning to her in dreams, saying,
Hold onto my shoulder, there is more
to this life. And in yesterday’s mirror
glimpse the two of them
strolling the beach,
red camelias winding through silvered hair.


* * * * *

Los Angeles-based poet, Ronna Magy was raised in Detroit, Michigan. Her work is published in: Writers Resist, American Writers Review, Artists and Climate Change, Persimmon Tree, Nasty Women Poets, Sinister Wisdom, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, and elsewhere.