Seasonal Love
~ If little by little you stop loving me. – Pablo Neruda
I hope you remember, as I remember, breath suspended in your arms, and watching the young
hawk, black plumage glistening, dive, slicing the cold air with a loud hiss. Falling. Improbably
landing. Slipping on a post of the icy fence. Scrambling. Flailing.
Old Love
~ I shall stop loving you little by little. – Pablo Neruda
With every text you answer for work not even pretending to listen to the day you weren’t present
for. With every glass you leave on the floor next to the chair where you sit staring at the screen,
never looking out at the garden you didn’t help plant. With every winter night under the covers
where you don’t warm my cold feet.
Our Love
~ My love feeds on your love, beloved. – Pablo Neruda
As you catch my eye, mid-roll, when the young, supple couple on the screen, on the beach
rolls over and into each other, sand sticking nowhere. We laugh together, huddled beneath the
fraying, too small, blanket. Warmed by the knowledge that nothing was ever—is ever—as
graceful, as easy, as the stories always say.
Amy Marques grew up between languages and places and learned, from an early age, the multiplicity of narratives. She penned children’s books, barely read medical papers, and numerous letters before turning to short fiction and visual poetry. She is a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net nominee and has work published in journals and anthologies including Streetcake Magazine, MoonPark Review, Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, Jellyfish Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Reservoir Road Literary Review. You can read more at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.
