Mary McColley

Couplets on the Eve

Nothing will make it better.
I’ve a soul as split as a serpent’s tongue.

I’ve passed sunsets on bridges, nights drunk on the old margins of the Seine, &
every bottle emptied, every visa expired.

I want France like I have never wanted anything else.
Yet even

there, I am lonesome, caught
in the currents of myself, sea-lorn & longing for pine-stains on my heels,

the sticky sap telling me I belong to here,
this earth.