Andromeda by Melanie Power

November 21, 2023
Poem title: Andromeda Poet name: Melanie Power Poem: By the memory of freedom, along streets and avenues, we are taunted. Nothing sweet is in season yet, but mouths ache, hungry. Reveries of strawberries, soft & wet, pooling in stained cartons. What is relief? That we could touch the way a rainstorm fails to drench July afternoon heat. All winter, alone, I roamed forsaken sidewalks. Frost misted window corners. Hydrangeas shivered beneath snow. Loneliness hardened the world, dyeing fingertips blue. A kiss was like Andromeda—such a bright, faraway thing. But the amaryllis in my throat did not die; its bulb went dormant. What is longing? That I cannot picture the distance between two bodies ever closing. Many nights of my life I worshipped stars, splayed into grass, forgetting where the ground was. What is love? That I circled, again and again, back to the altar of myself. Your name is a hundred green buds waking the maple trees. April rays are a fever in me, skin crimsoning. Courage is dreaming your fingers in every place the sun cannot reach. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Melanie Power Previously published in Full Moon of Afraid and Craving McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. Melanie Power is the Montreal-based author of Full Moon of Afraid and Craving (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).