Sudden Prose Reprints: Meryl DePasquale's "On Parting"

On Parting

In that print two kids in kimonos slip sake to a rooster, trying to purchase a few more moments alone. Reverently, they stoop over a big orange bird. Lovely drooping tail feathers. Without horn-blast, the dawn creeps in fire and cream.

The same hour, he and I argue the entire way to the airport. Fat flakes fall against the windshield. No one can accuse us of graceful morning behavior. Once the weather clears my plane is in the air. Cottony clumps still hang around the mountain ranges. The woman beside me cries softly.

Passengers do not look to each other for sympathy. I want his hand cupped on the back of my neck. I imagine him saying I want you with bare sincerity. That sureness is enough to make a woman quiver all over, to cause her to crow. 

Meryl DePasquale lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a letterpress printer and participates in a collaborative mail art project called Four-Letter Press. Her chapbook Dream of a Perfect Interface is forthcoming with Dancing Girl Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Interim Magazine, Paper Darts and The Offending Adam, among other places. Meryl teaches at Saint Catherine University and the Loft Literary Center.

I originally read this poem in Handsome.