to you, my striking auburn-locked siren.

I spent hours typing the texts of our courtship

on recipe cards until the ribbons

on the old red Royal unspooled.

I gave them to you in a dovetail box

now buried beside newsprint-wrapped crystal flutes

and splintered picture frames.

The edges have gone ashy, the ink muddy.

Everything is ridiculous

without you. I remember the echo

in the rotunda, voyeurs on the marble stairs,

your hand on my belly. I’m here 

landing upon you. A champagne toast 

on the lawn. My first sip of alcohol in seven months. 

No one's voice in me but yours.

Our Scrabble honeymoon, playing side by side

in the plank board cabin with no windows.

The frantic ceiling fan, a propeller

struggling to launch our landlocked skiff.

Inside this golden. Summer swollen

you held my arm and we waded

into the murky river, legs tangled

in cattail reeds, ankle deep in silt. We are waltzing,

we move as one. We are colliding and out to sea.

Jenny Della Santa’s poems have appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, Birdcoat Quarterly, The Shore, Palette Poetry, Pretty Owl Poetry and other publications. She is the winner of the 2022 David Wade Hogue Poetry Award and has been a nominee for Best of The Net and Best New Poets. She has an MFA from Mills College and lives in Oakland with her husband and young daughter. Visit her website at: jennydellasanta.com