—for E. R. Shaffer

You tell me I said that really fast.
But I spent a night, once, alone
on the beach in Coronado, living
a whole life.

                      For hours, I held 
my fingers like woody stems in the surf, 
letting foam gather in slow layers,
wave upon wave.

                              At the time, I thought
of St. Brendan’s tree, all covered with white
birds of fallen angels singing
for their release, waiting.

                                          It took me so
long to think of the rose and the pearl
—to step off that beach fully 
formed and living.

                                But I was alone.
You were not there. And it is okay
if you need more time to remember.
 

---

Author’s note: My girlfriend and I had not been (officially) dating very long when I–who am known for keeping things close to my chest–accidentally let slip the words, “God, I love you,” folded in a quiet sigh, almost under my breath. She sat bolt upright, finger in the air: “Can we just acknowledge,” she asked, “that you said that really fast, and that I am not there yet?” “Of course,” I conceded, and I sent her this poem the next day. Two weeks later, at two in the morning, she suddenly asks me what day it is. “Well, it’s past midnight now,” I answer, “so, technically, it’s Imbolc.” I watch a dam long guarded crack across her face, and she–who famously says everything that comes into her mind the moment it lands there–blurts out at last, “Fuck it! I love you!” The writer’s moral of the story? It is often the things we say against type that are the most honest.

Reyzl Grace (reyzlgrace.com / @reyzlgrace) is a poet/librarian with work in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other magazines, as well as an editor for Psaltery & Lyre. She lives in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.)