Two Poems by Marissa Glover

PAIN IS NOT MR. DARCY

If pain announced its arrival,

we would prepare. We’d train.

Get our hearts in shape.

We’d wear our thickest clothes, layer

upon layer, pull on our heaviest boots—

we’d be ready.

But pain is not the dashing Mr. Darcy

in his ruffled white shirt, patiently standing

at the door with flowers and wine, knocking

with perfect knuckles. Pain is a teenager

who ding dong ditches—the one mama warned

you about—who waits in a parked car

down the street then lobs two dozen eggs

at your plate-glass windows and teepees

the oak trees while you sleep.

Pain is the storm that makes landfall

once hurricane season has passed, long after

you used the stockpiled groceries and gas.

You hunker down until the weatherman says,

The coast is clear. Then you put away plywood,

dump bags of sand out back. And that,

my friend, is when Pain seeps

through stucco cracks for a sneak attack.

Pain—the kind you can’t recover from

is an assassin. It carries your photo

in its pocket and stalks you, waiting.

Tracking you through city streets

by blood spilled in a non-fatal fray,

Pain quietly slips something in your drink

when you’re not looking and smiles

when they tell you to hang on,

the ambulance is on its way.

---

NETS

Low country fishermen are leaving shore,

the time has come again to drift away.

Mine throws me farewell daises—I want more

but crashing waves have drowned the words we say.

He loves me. No, he loves me not I think.

The roses he once gave are bleeding red,

and while their sentiment was soft and pink

dying, they scatter thorns across my bed.

I shout against the roar and hope he turns

before he finally sails beyond my sight;

I cast his name across the brackish churn

of waves that pull my voice beneath the tide.

I’m caught again inside my safety net—

wanting to swim, afraid of getting wet.

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Marissa Glover teaches and writes in Florida. Her poetry was recently anthologized in Persona Non Grata by Fly on the Wall Press and is found in UK journals such as Amaryllis, Picaroon, Poetry24, Bonnie’s Crew, Solstice Sounds, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and Three Drops from a Cauldron. Follow her on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_