Horizon is an edge I never thought to explore.
You are the mariner — Even when I found you beaten
against the beach, when your lips licked blue
and swollen and spoke no language. Even when
your face was rough from shell and sand, I knew you
were the hero and I let you. Sailor. Other men
rode the tides in and I have eaten those. Loneliness
then , when you have swallowed the only thing
that talks back. My most careful with you
appears to have meant nothing. Or little.
Seaweed tea and conch soup, aloe and bandages torn
from my only cloth. Then seven years of you alongside,
of our thick, moving sleep in the dunes. I hate
your gratefulness. You speak as if you were indentured,
as if a debt was owed. I still lose. Calypso alone again
on her busy father’s island. Wife to the shipwrecked
and widow of the miraculous return. Who is the exile
here? You choose to go but I decide to send, to build
a raft from bamboo and palm, knowing the plants I lash
together are my own, cut from the jungle that will darken
at your back. It will still be me keeping you
from harm until you reach that same hazy line
which you taught me to notice. Are you thankful, again?
Make me a necklace from your broken telescope and go.
I with my spyglass diamonds, sometimes might look
towards that country you return to and curse you for leaving.
Other days bless, depending.
Eireann Corrigan graduated from SLC in 1999. Since then, she has published two books of poetry: Splintering and You Remind Me of You, and a novel, Ordinary Ghosts. This poem was written during her senior year at SLC, and included as part of her thesis. It was read as a part of Sadie Lou’s Student and Alumnae/i Collaborative Reading.