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Author’s Statement — It's been more than two decades since I wrote this poem. One thing is clear: my subject matter has shifted through the years, but it hasn't changed in any drastic or fundamental way. I still write about heartbreak and ferocity, ocean and sky. Seeds of my early life, seeds for becoming a writer.
Laura Didyk’s fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have been published in Diagram, The Sun, Post Road, Painted Bride Quarterly, Fence, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. Her artwork has been featured in No Tokens magazine,Orion, the Washington Post Magazine, and Getting Started (Storey Publishing) and is forthcoming in Lost Object (Hat & Beard Press), Collage Your Life (Storey Publishing), and Ethel 22. She has been a resident writing fellow at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Currently at work on a memoir, she lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Instagram: @lauradidyk
issue 31, 2003
There Are Other Views That Open Me
The horizon is ruined
by a ship, a car’s horn
behind us, your arm
around my shoulders.
I’d like to break this
beach like a stick. Its families,
cloudy strangers. Strange
clouds. You think I’m a wife.
I want more than other women want.
You can’t take me away
shell by shell. The sky’s a home
for migrant ghosts, but you pretend
nothing’s dying. We’re no older
than we were last year. Or the year
I forgot you were fluent in everything
but staying. I’m directing this
at your eyes. See that man
with the buoy and the radio? He’d
get down on one knee and beg
to drown all signs of my unhappiness.
And I’d kneel down
with him. There are other views
that open me—the river’s
swell, a cloud’s edge
ruffling the sea. A bed-sized piece
of tin washed-up on the sand:
I will lie on it like a fish
meant for land, revel
under the sky’s shrewd gaze.