Solstice
Now I am so nearly a body
stepped outside itself entirely. It is blue
at the intersection of things—the corners
of the room, the slight bend in the elbow
above hospital sheets. I remember
how the sky as I slip backwards
under ocean is still sky only liquid, rippling.
This is what it is to confuse love with duty:
so much space in the margins. It should matter,
at least, that I press the hard knobs of my middle
back into the white wall and study the window
like a painting. Can we call window
that which provides no interiority? To witness,
I’ve learned, is less vision and more distance
between watching and wanting to see.
Sometimes I think if I could half-understand
the whole truth I could half-be the whole
of me. So much of this life is like a long swim
to the surface. Like the tug of arm and kick of leg
toward that dimpled disc of sun. Like the moment
just before one hand splits the sea. Just before
the last pull. The moment the body might,
almost and finally, begin to breathe.
Madeline Miele grew up scrambling across Maine's rocky coast and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia. Her work has appeared in Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Black Fox Literary Magazine, The Stonecoast Review, Uppagus, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry.