The Melancholy

by Amanda Merpaw

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an erasure, with apologies to Louise Glück

I had a melancholy
so melancholy it
opened my letters, which were
answers.

At the outset,
when the phone rang,
it came to me.

It was night
and the snow was falling.

Well, I said,
what can you do?

Life is enviable.

The telling of days,
and time,
and the odd sensation
of feeling something
for another.

It lit small fires,
I remember.

It was strange,
as though
this occasion

was radiant.

Then it was gone.

Outside, the snow
changing
here and there
the street, the trees, white—
but not really.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR

Amanda Merpaw (she/her) is a writer, editor, and educator. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in CV2, Grain, Plenitude, Prairie Fire, Room, and with Playwrights Canada Press, and she was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2022 Poem of the Year Contest. Her chapbook Put the Ghosts Down Between Us (2021) is available from Anstruther Press and her debut collection is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in 2024. @amanda.merpaw on Instagram.

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