hilary vaughn dobel
year one It wasn’t summer but we decided it should be. I wore the blue dress, then a white one, and was too worldly to suppose myself a different person. What is love, however troubled, to the sweep of someone telling you they see what you hoped they would see, to hold that in their sights even as it harms or hunts them. It was hubris to say I would stay unchanged until it was too late, the belief I was sufficient for my own limited purpose, my litany of small and careless refusals that brought me to this cliff’s edge wondering if the hills behind me ever made the sound of joy when the wind bustled through them. But you were there beneath me all that time in the white chalk of the earth that crumbled as it tried to bear me up.
75
