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Published: Fri Jul 1 2016
Salman Toor, Fag Puddle with Candle, Shoe, and Flag (detail), 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, N.Y. Photo: Farzad Owrang.
Online 2016 Journeys Loss Spirituality
Lethe

For all the fish, the little blessings that I missed,
maybe I should just thank you. We can leave
the dress behind that didn’t fit or fly to a new city
& wear the metropolis as our skin. Things happen,
how one love becomes another. In seasons, maybe
it’s okay to remember how I lived multitudes of lives.
Where does oblivion begin? Years I tried to forget?
And be reborn? Not as a naiad. No. I want feathers
& dark. Let me be the hunter. According to Virgil,
I’m almost ready. But if long to stay, I should know
how I got here. How to—Have I been drinking
your water so long I’ve erased whole passages?
Maybe I’ll forget. I forget everything these days.

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Tanya Grae is the author of Undoll (YesYes Books, 2019), a National Poetry Series finalist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. (updated 9/2018)

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