Poetry by Madison Golding
The Bookshop at the End of Wanting
I found you between the cracked spines in the vellichor of a shop where someone else’s marginalia said yes, exactly! in pencil beside the line I needed most.
I looked through paned glass, its glazing chipped.
Every stranger outside the window carried their whole catastrophic life in a canvas tote. All of us, separately, immolated.
Obsession. Infatuation.
These are neighborhoods I keep moving back to. The rent is cheap. Great light. I swear I’ll leave some day.
I never do.
We stayed up past reason. The sky went indigo and misty, ice clouds lit from below. You said you knew what it meant like you always do.
The same wanting returns each morning.
Relentless.
Madison Golding writes from the Washington D.C. area about the people history invented and systems tried to silence. Their poems explore desire, the body, spiritual longing, and tenderness smuggled through toughness. They publish at substack.com/@madisongolding.
