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I Thought No One Would Ever Love Me
so I lay in my daybed at night
& fashioned myself a Future
Wife. Someone like the girl
up the street with the old tan
Volvo. The one with one foot
in volleyball & the other
in drama club. Maybe I hid
her bleach. Maybe I gave
her pearls & a satin-trim
robe. Maybe I cut her
diploma into fleur-de-lis
& dipped them in the dark
chocolate of my chintzy
desires. I installed My Wife
in a woody, masculine den
& made her whippet-willed
& full of brandy. I stole her
hairspray & gave her a letter desk
instead & an actual inkwell.
I gave her lockable, leather-
bound love. I imagined her parents
somewhere safe, warm & out
of the way. We summered in Monaco,
read nothing but Daphne du Maurier,
took our sun at the Top of the City.
She had a smile like a high-wire act
& a signature like a sigil. I never
stopped loving the way she slid
into day-old stockings like a snake
reassuming its shed. In truth?
Her name was Jill. She wore
athletic shorts & never spoke
to me. So I renamed her Miriam
de Havilland & had her
handle my correspondence.
We cohabitated fantastically.
I installed paintings throughout
our Morning Room: storm-
flecked seas, gold-framed
& foaming at the mouth!
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Karyna McGlynn is a writer, professor, and collagist. She is the author of three poetry collections from Sarabande Books: I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, Hothouse—a New York Times Editor's Choice—and, forthcoming, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, The New England Review, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. Recent honors include the 2020 Rumi Prize for Poetry, and the2020 Florida Review Editors' Award in Fiction. McGlynn is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Christian Brothers University in Memphis. [Find her at www.karyna.io or on instagram/twitter @karynamcglynn]
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Terrarium with Flaming Muse, collage by Karyna McGlynn