Asuncia
by Nin Andrews
Now that you are gone, I am so lonely, even the angels love my sorrow as if it were their own. Sometimes I imagine them, reclining at beach resorts or walking the streets of their glass cities or descending in silver jets to survey the miseries of the earth they admire so.
Only they can see and hear me, now that I refuse to go out, now that any illumination would be gratefully accepted. But insights, I think, are only occupied by angels for certain hours of the summer light.
During the winter months the dark ones sip absinthe and stick pins in our hearts. I feel them like a twinge or ache I can't resist. Just last night while drinking my third glass of cheap Chablis, I heard one whispering, I thought, the word Asuncia.
That's how they always speak, in single words with several or no meanings. Asuncia I pondered, wondering if it were some city in Paraguay or a cathedral in downtown Cleveland, the art of levitation, a flavor of liquer like anisette, or the name of a Spanish saint or poet like Vallejo.
Yes, like Vallejo whose grief was a kind of sex all women would die for in a single night.
If only I could die like that. I picture him, Vallejo, my own Vallejo, his soul enveloping me, gently at first, like a mist: Asuncia, Asuncia he whispers again and again as I rise above the clouds. Such bliss could blaze through eternity, I assure you.
You who were good a mere matter of minutes.
Nin Andrews (American, born 1958) grew up on a farm in Virginia and now lives in Poland, Ohio. She is the author of a number of poetry books, including Sleeping with Houdini, in which the above prose poem appears.
by Nin Andrews
Now that you are gone, I am so lonely, even the angels love my sorrow as if it were their own. Sometimes I imagine them, reclining at beach resorts or walking the streets of their glass cities or descending in silver jets to survey the miseries of the earth they admire so.
Only they can see and hear me, now that I refuse to go out, now that any illumination would be gratefully accepted. But insights, I think, are only occupied by angels for certain hours of the summer light.
During the winter months the dark ones sip absinthe and stick pins in our hearts. I feel them like a twinge or ache I can't resist. Just last night while drinking my third glass of cheap Chablis, I heard one whispering, I thought, the word Asuncia.
That's how they always speak, in single words with several or no meanings. Asuncia I pondered, wondering if it were some city in Paraguay or a cathedral in downtown Cleveland, the art of levitation, a flavor of liquer like anisette, or the name of a Spanish saint or poet like Vallejo.
Yes, like Vallejo whose grief was a kind of sex all women would die for in a single night.
If only I could die like that. I picture him, Vallejo, my own Vallejo, his soul enveloping me, gently at first, like a mist: Asuncia, Asuncia he whispers again and again as I rise above the clouds. Such bliss could blaze through eternity, I assure you.
You who were good a mere matter of minutes.
Nin Andrews (American, born 1958) grew up on a farm in Virginia and now lives in Poland, Ohio. She is the author of a number of poetry books, including Sleeping with Houdini, in which the above prose poem appears.
