Back to Issue Thirty

I would let go, if only it came naturally

BY EMILY PITTINOS

The water has a way of happening, lapping at Mosquito Beach, wearing the sandstone
                ​down sweetly, layer by layer.

I can feel it coming on, my season of lavish suffering, the why me why me why me why me
               ​ that leaves me snowblind in the asking.

Pennies planted to coax hydrangeas produced a crocus by mistake, its beak opening
                ​through spring snow.

I begged for rain instead (knowing the late-late frost is a kind of murder), so feel
                ​failed prayer hot against my ear.​ I​t is terribly easy

to take on another’s pain. Or at least to consider it taken. My eye shimmers with robbery.
                Should I be ashamed?

I may say the wrong things, but there is no right way to say nothing will change.
                ​On my dulled day, the poet brags

he could break into blossom. What do lost daughters burst into?

Emily Pittinos is a teaching writer currently living in Boise, Idaho. A creative writing instructor at Interlochen Arts Camp, a Writers in the Schools teacher, and an Associate Editor for Poetry Northwest, Pittinos received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she served as the Senior Fellow in Poetry. Her recent work appears, or will soon appear, in Michigan Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Third Coast Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Pinwheel Journal, New England Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.

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