Marie-Elizabeth Mali

No Such Thing as Away
 
My ex-husband remarried within a year.
 
*
 
For him love meant trust-falling backwards 
into his beloved’s arms. For me it meant leaping 
hand-in hand face-forward off a cliff into the sea. 
 
I kept dropping him, thinking he wanted 
to swim. He kept breaking my leap, 
thinking I wanted to be caught.
 
*
 
Some days the skins I’ve shed 
call to me from the darkness 
where they writhe like dug-up worms. 
No such thing as away on this circled earth.
 
*
 
"Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love."
 
*
 
I am tumbled sea-glass. I am a footprint 
at the water’s edge. I am the erasing 
wave. I am a collage of broken shells. 
I am dunes in a high wind. I am the wind.
 
*
 
Born with a half-rolled map for skin 
and a museum for a heart, 
I thought I got to the end, but found 
a door and kept going. Each wall, 
a window with a broken lock. 
 
*
 
My heart is made of water. 
My heart dances to salsa by itself. 
My heart curls like a book left out 
in the rain. My heart lies 
on the bridge at night to watch 
the stars. My heart forgets 
to make the bed. My heart
built its nest on a cracked branch. 
 
*
 
Standing in the water, toes wedged 
between rocks, body swaying, I cry.
My paltry contribution of salt.
I swim under the full moon at high tide,
clatter of beach stones rolled by waves.
 
*
 
Some days my mind is like
a gull hanging onto 
a sandwich too big 
to swallow, beak clamped 
on the monstrous bite 
as it runs from other gulls 
so as not to share.
 
*
 
Maybe we make our own luck.
 
*
 
My mouth is an empty birdcage, a tunnel 
of hunger. My mouth does its own 
dirty work. My mouth has a hard time 
wrapping itself around No. My mouth
is a repository for memory. My mouth can
take down your mouth. It makes its own 
weather. My mouth is a cave of joy.
 


*Couplet from the poem "From the Japanese" by Louise Gluck.

As a Relationship Alchemist and TEDx Speaker, Marie-Elizabeth Mali shows individuals and couples how to deepen love and connection in their relationships. Drawing on her Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine and over 20 years of client work, she teaches people how to be authentic instead of shrinking themselves to fit in. She also has an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of one book of poetry, Steady, My Gaze (Tebot Bach, 2011) and co-editor with Annie Finch of the anthology, Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 2012). Her relationship work has been featured in Thrive Global, SWAAY, and Forbes and her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, RATTLE, and Tiferet.