Long Weekend, Megan Pinto

We rented a small place by the sea.

For a few days, we could look out across a widening expanse of blues. Nights beside the water, more stars. You traced Orion’s Belt against the dark.

I hoped to be free of seeking attention from the external world, which always overwhelmed my art. Yet, in my work there were times I could give myself over completely to matters of the heart.

In the sand, I watched white-breasted gulls return. You could spend lifetimes in the shadow of other people’s wants, and you have done it many lifetimes over, said the mystic, brushing my tears from the cards. In my work, I was adept at constructing niche dioramas of the heart, long hallways for certain sorrows to brood in, and sudden windows facing westward to gaze upon joys, until, one morning, I found my own joy dead in the yard. After that, I woke repeatedly into a persistent dark.

So you see, I often said, I have lived so long with a vacant heart and what if our love turns to sand? You take my hands into your hands. Our small place: the sea is illegible at night, except for its solemn crashing. To be drawn into oneself, then out like the tide, is that love? Or is love what shore remains?

By the sea, everything seen is seen lightly,

shadows of wings passing over sand.

Themes and Return, Manuel Bandeira (trans. from Portuguese)

But why is there so much suffering if in the sky, is the slow glide of the night?

But why is there so much suffering if the wind is a song in the night?

But why is there so much suffering if now with the dew, the flower gives fragrance to night?

But why is there so much suffering, if my thoughts are free in the night?

Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News. Poems found on poetryfoundation.org and allpoetry.com.