On the days when I'm an island
or adrift in the world's ocean,
I long to be Ophelia,
fair hair curling in the water.
Everybody has a shred of Ophelia in them
like a scrap of bright torn cloth
among the jumbles of their souls.
As if the violets on her grave
drank up her essence through their roots,
left it on the ground where you live.
Perhaps you have an Ophelia voice and an uncertain
Ophelia song
strumming through the corridors of your mind.
I have a broken Ophelia heart, Ophelia eyes
that turn the days cold and rainy
or crackling with fire at the edges.
They tell me:
to
call
out
to all the scattered Ophelias in this lonely world.
They tell me to say
Ophelias, let us weep
rivers and oceans.
Let us weep for everything that ever shattered
for then is it not forgotten.
Let us weep until streams connect us like bridges
until we can paddle a birchbark canoe,
slowly,
over and through our mourning
towards the night's falling curtain. |
Submission Name: Rosemary
