Longing

Abstract

[Longing] April Goldman (bio) Keywords April, Goldman, poetry, table, poppy, writing, longing is misunderstood as vaporous, full of sighs and fainting, wind strewn leavessmelling of charcoal and the cold when, in fact, longing is a hard and pleasant little workspace. A pretty mango wood table. Knowing that, I need to fold and unfold myself like a mapon the table. To contain my most watery parts that want to branch and dissolveand get me too wet. Happiness: a wind through a blight of poppies. It takes a long time to unlatch something like that. To open up a parenthesisthat looks like a burningred poppy. Start with the wedding on the cold blue lake,the sun like a muff across her shoulders. Love so thick she could hardly breathe. Telling the truth of a story requires leaving certain parts untouched,except for one flower. Then later, everyone will say, it didn't make sense, the ending wasn't earned! The point had never been to make sense. The point had been to becomethatburning red flower. As if I didn't require some omissions, and coming to an end wasn't my goddamn birthright.Like longing isn't just the thingI'm made of. [End Page 244] April Goldman april goldman is a graduate of the University of Houston's MFA program in poetry. Her recent poems appear in Narrative Magazine, The Journal, and Third Coast. She lives in Truckee, California, and is on Instagram as aprileli. Copyright © 2021 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.