Ghazal for Longing by Sarah Mills

I wrote for weeks, then titled my essay Longing.

Ghazal for Longing

by Sarah Mills

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From my bedroom ceiling, I would display my longing—
my heart, suspended, a knotted macramé of longing. 

In my dream, we slow-dance to a fast song in a cemetery.
Eternal, he calls me—though my sobriquet is Longing.

The radiologist places a heavy shield over me and says
stay still, then reads the results of my x-ray: longing. 

I press dried forget-me-nots into a book of love poems
and leave it on his doorstep—a bouquet of longing. 

On the phone, my words tremble like telephone wires
in the wind—I am afraid of this faraway longing.

He removes the cutlass from its sheath, steel glimmering,
my tears glittering—oh—this swordplay of longing.

I go out with a lantern searching for him, but he eludes me.
Amorphous—a spine with no vertebrae, longing. 

I follow Red Giants, Pulsars, Carbon Stars, Luminous
Blue Variables—but tonight, I am led astray by longing. 

How sweet he is, like a hotel pillow chocolate. (Sigh!)
Thoughts of him give me tooth decay—longing.

As a scholar of heartache, I know how to obey longing
I wrote for weeks, then titled my essay Longing. 

He calls my name—Sarah—but I can’t see him. He is down
on the landing, and I am forever up the stairway, longing.