On the summer solstice we bike to the edge
of the forest, jump the tracks and drink wine
on the bridge with no railing, because this
is what you would have wanted. Each of us holds
our own version of you, and we try to piece it all together
in a way that adds up to your leaving. Clare,
what they’re saying about you sounds like
what they would say about us, and here we are
circled in this shock of sunshine, unlearning certainty
again. O COVID summer. O disillusioned June.
They say deepwater blackout feels like euphoria
and you knew this, and you just had to know this
for yourself. Clare, you were luminous.
Abundant sunlight, adventure looking for a place
to happen, protagonist in everyone else’s life.
To know you was to love you. Wild, rainbow-eyed child
who flirted with the world, who offered her curiosity
to everything, who wore her transformation like a necklace
of shark’s teeth, who knew what the ocean knew.
Who lent her heart to everyone until there was nothing left.
Fearless one, intrepid sprite, mermaid who dove too close
to the sun. We understood each other in the way of women
who have spent so many miles with themselves.
In the way of children born to a place they were meant
to leave. All childhood long we shivered
with Midwest restlessness and dreamed of the day
we would make our escape. This is how we learned
to lean so far into our futures, so deep into our imaginations,
we lost our balance, and places we had never seen
began to feel more real to us than anywhere.
How eagerly we opened every new doorway
into every new world, each more enchanting than the last.
Clare, is this how it happened? Did you feel the pull
of the world beyond life like you felt the pull of everywhere
that was not your home? How long had this escape hatch
lurked silently in your depths? How many times
had you tried to open it? How many times
had you fought your way back to life’s surface
and emerged laughing, impossible brighter than before?
We took your resilience as a fact, and this
was our mistake. I expected only inspiration
from you, and this was my mistake. Fuck impermanence.
Fuck nonattachment. Fuck the hazards of having
potential. Fuck synchronicity. Fuck dopamine.
Fuck #neverstopexploring #optoutside #becauseitsthere.
Our disillusionment will not be Instagrammed.
Dear world, let me rest. Let me be scared.
Take back your vicarious lives, I don’t want them.
They follow me around like ghosts. I never asked
to be anyone’s manic pixie adventure girl.
Clare, I know you would want me to dwell on something other
than your darkness, but I can’t stop thinking
about that morning you dove into the ocean alone,
carrying only your breath and your sunlight and everything
you never told anyone. How you held on tight
to that final inhale, determined to wring more life
and depth out of it than any other breath, as you descended
into the ocean’s crushing embrace, into the ambient now,
into what wreck only you knew. How skillfully
you synced your body to the pressure, equalizing yourself
to the mystery that surrounded you, as you had done
so many times before, always eager to push yourself
just a little farther, to reach out and touch the glittering underside
of your fear—deepening, darkening, drunk on so many fathoms,
and there was no one to tell you when the rapture would begin.
No one to tell you enough. You’ve taken it too far this time.
My intuition is malfunctioning. I’m terrified
of finding what you found—a dead end in a path
I was certain would lead me to the rest of my life.
I’m terrified of how brave the world believes I am.
Don’t worry. I’ll find my appetite for awe again,
but let me be sick to my stomach for a while.
Dear Clare, all they found of you was your fin.
Dear Clare, the sunflowers you planted on the hillside
are in bloom. Dear Clare, the pandemic drags on
without you. I reserve the right to give up. Watch me.
Watch me never write again, if that’s what I want.
Watch me never leave home again, if that’s what I want.
Watch me never climb a mountain again, if that’s what I want.
Dear world, let the summer thunderstorms
shake the plains with all the agony and ecstasy
they can muster, and for once, let me feel no urge to dance
in the downpour. Let me breathe. Let me be.
Let me learn stillness in a way that makes sense to me.
Let me hunger in a way that doesn’t break me.
Let me listen, at last, to what the prairies have been trying
to tell me. Let me go easy on myself for once.
Let me ride my bike in the sunshine.
Monica Joy Claesson is a poet from Lincoln, NE, currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Miami. She writes about thrill seeking, awe, and edges. Her work has appeared in journals such as the North American Review, the Cimarron Review, the Mid-American Review, and more.
