Aaron Magloire

Shivering

Mournful—no, not mournful,
though that’s the word that keeps
wringing its hands above my head
today, late-summer mid-morning, it might be
the Equinox but I’m too tired to check—tired,
that’s it, not mournful, just tired
and remembering winter. Newport, we lost
heat for two weeks in peak
November, had to break open the basement
door and resuscitate the old oil heater
with our bare and flailing hands.
I was probably not much happier then
than I am now—some nights I’d haunt
the cliff walk and wonder would the ducks
get to me before the eels did,
if I threw myself into the surf. Which I never did
so now I remember it all fondly; that’s the way
things go, you survive them, leave them
however gaunt but think if I am leaving
then it must have been Paradise. And it was. Mournful
isn’t it, but I miss my bleak shore, shocked
crags tonguing the mansions under oath
of storm clouds. Someone—a friend—told me, dead,
what he’d miss most would be relief.
After a while we finally did get the heat going
again. Every lifetime, warmth like that,
you’re owed it only once.

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Aaron Magloire is from Queens and studies English and African American Studies at Yale University.