The Girl I Left Behind Me, by Meghan Kemp-Gee

The Girl I Left Behind Me, by Eastman Johnson (USA) 1872

The Girl I Left Behind Me

I think I will never be satisfied. I have to think up 
names for the three different kinds
of wind that lift her hair and coat and part
the sky behind her face but don’t blow her wide-brimmed hat
away. She’s been reading recently, studying the classics,
and I will never be satisfied and she knows it, I think.
She knows all about it, knows what I mean
when I say I’ve left a girl behind, knows all three winds’
three names. But never mind. It’s cold outside
and she invites me in somewhere for a cup of good tea,
an earl grey that tastes to me like it knows 
where the bodies are buried. (They’re buried under the feet
of girls about whom all I can say is that their names
and faces break the colour right out of the sky.)

Meghan Kemp-Gee

This poem was first published at Aurora Journal.
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Meghan Kemp-Gee lives somewhere between Vancouver BC and Fredericton NB. She writes poetry, comics, and scripts of all kinds. She co-created the webcomics Contested Strip and Space Heroines of El-Andoo, and her comics and short fiction have been published in numerous anthologies. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM, Copper Nickel, Rising Phoenix Review, The Shore, Stone of Madness, Altadena Poetry Review, Anomaly, Train, and Rejection Letters. She studied at Amherst College and Chapman University and is currently a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. She also teaches composition and plays ultimate frisbee. You can find her on Twitter @MadMollGreen.