Poem by C. Oulens

What I Didn’t Take Today

I’m trying to find some joy for my poem because both—the poem and I—are 

aching for it, and everything I might receive it from has declined our plea, 

albeit politely. I could have peeked into our old album, where smiles lie nestled 

in time’s stillness, more than willing to spill on me—but today I’m not keen on 

their generosity. I could have scanned my journal, older than the album itself,

which carries a hurriedly torn quarter-of-a-page bearing your hasty-but-pretty, 

jumbo-font message, calligraphied with an improvised permanent marker:

“[your name] is inside”—

taped to the inside of the front cover, ahead of the scribbles on my first page. It 

has always brought me a grin when I recall the walls you scaled to slip in 

before adorning the door with this cello-taped, unabashed announcement—it’s

confident, presumed self-invite.

I could have done any of these, and more, but I wouldn’t want to cling. If there 

is joy now, it is only in a beatific scream befitting the ache of letting go, of 

accepting impermanence. Perhaps I’ll go for it, and this poem—it will too, 

learn to introspect and wait its turn. I know it will come to know, in time, that 

joy can’t be contained: a scintilla wriggling to break through, even as I breathe 

buried beneath this flotilla of bulk-laden pain—from behind some brazen wall, 

a break-in door, or an inconspicuous bend. And maybe then—birds and bees

and I—will be busy enough to notice when the poem begins to bustle. And on 

some long, cold winter night, the album and the quarter-of-a-page may relearn 

how to rekindle, for this old heart, a new, warm, tear-strung smile; and for the 

poem, a string of ocean’s pearls.