by C.R. Resetarits
Our Garden at Sainte-Adresse
A day at a Monet exhibit
and your hand still fits well on my shoulder.
Quiet in our seascape meditations,
quiet in the space our middle of marriage takes,
quiet in our late afternoon cup of tea
on a covered patio,
until I let you know what I want
for our last days even if I never learn to paint—
that we lay on a beach like seaweed
and share the sun’s last smile on the surface
of the old waters of the green Mediterranean
and when the evening comes
that we tell each other stories
of our beginning,
of that first night when I made you dinner
like an old wife,
of that first night when our skin was as soft
as baby nectarines,
of that first night when we lied in bed
and fell asleep at the open window.
You ask me to listen with you to the sad songs
of the wind without wincing, to taste unafraid
the sugar of the distant springtime
in our breaking basket of ripe purple plums.
Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Bitter Oleander, EcoTheo Review, Feral, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Midway Journal, Moria Online, Oyez Review, and elsewhere. Her micro-chapbook, Attachment Theory, was published by Ghost City Press in June 2021. She is an Associate Poetry Editor at miniskirt magazine. She lives in California.
C. R. Resetarits is a writer and collagist. Her collage works have appeared in the pages and on the covers of dozens of magazines, as well as several poetry collections. New collages now on the covers of Shooter Magazine (UK) and Cowboy Jamboree(US).She lives in Faulkner-riddled Oxford, MS.