THE MAN SINGING INTO HIS CELL PHONE, I hope it is for love. A daughter on her way to bed, maybe, or a wife he misses. I could say be more like the one who leaves nothing behind and I could say when your baby dies, look to the hen for consolation. Advice I’ve received, in hot places, in winter time, in winter time again. The hen doesn’t notice when she loses a chick. The unattached heart is safe.
But everyone knows this isn’t really true, so why say it. In summer, women ease their backs into latticed café chairs that press a crosshatched pattern on their skin. I practiced saying, it is a common, private kind of grief. I would like to say now, I would like to say, it is enough: to have warm brick sidewalks, to imagine other people walking around with broken or healing or happy hearts.
Megan Leonard lives and works in New Hampshire. You can find more of her poetry in Sun’s Skeleton, Poems by Sunday, Glitterpony, Puerto del Sol and The Bellevue Literary Review.