It Was Surreal Without You, by Kelly Ann Ellis

The Woman and the Roses, painting by Marc Chagall (France, b. Belarus) 1929

It Was Surreal Without You

What do you love
you asked 
not who but what.

I thought and having 
to think hinted 
at the chasm between 

waking and dreaming, 
spoke of grimy windows, 
cracked linoleum. Dirt.

In the museum today, I drift
past a painting you loved
a dreamscape. Like Chagall,

you are dead, but alive
you’d float your fantasies
over bowls of roses, behold

slivers of silver peaking 
through leaves, clouds
pillowing a hovering

nude, queen of the blue
skyline, angel of cyan,
goddess to her lover

and and and 

one lone oarsman below.
But no, 
the perspective is off.

It is what, not who 
you love, and perspective is
no matter. You are dead. Left 

what you loved, named: a domain, 
claimed, staked with words, tethered 
to this fragile vessel: a boat, a bowl, roses.

​Kelly Ann Ellis

This poem was first published in Friendswood Library's Ekphrastic Poetry Festival Anthology 2023.

​Kelly Ann Ellis holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Houston, where she also taught for over a decade. A member of the critique group Poets in the Loop, she is the co-founder of hotpoet, Inc. and the managing editor of Equinox. Her poetry, which has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, was featured in the REELpoetry festival for three years consecutive years and showcased in the Houston Fringe Festival in 2019. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2020, and her poetry collection, The Hungry Ghost Diner, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2023.