Someday I’ll Love—
After Frank O’Hara
like I dreamt of the lamb—slaughtered,
forgotten,
lying on porcelain tile, on crimson-filled grout—
and woke up thinking of my grandmother,
of her Betty Boop hands that held
marbled stone, held dough-balled flour,
held the first strands of my hair floating atop the river—
like winter apples, the ones that hang outside
my living room window and survive first snowfall
to feed the neighborhood crows,
how they fall
beneath my boots, staining my rubber
soles with epigraphs of rot, epigraphs
of fors, of dears, of holding on till frost’s end.
Someday I will see long-forgotten fingerprints
on the inside of my eyelids as I go to sleep,
as I close my eyes for silence on a Wednesday,
mourning—seeking—creases and smile lines,
porch lights and swing sets,
summer nights of lightning bugs and Johnny Cash.
I think it will be a Tuesday, or maybe someday
is yesterday, is two months from now, is going
to be a day when I forget what I’m supposed
to be remembering.
For now, I will paint my nails cradle, adorn
my skin in cloth that doesn’t choke,
tell my bones that they are each
a lamb
remembered.
Copyright © 2024 by Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“During my first year in New Mexico, away from home for the first time in years, my grandmother was admitted to a care facility for dementia. This poem honors that specific moment of grief, as well as writing a love poem toward yourself. Its title comes from a line in Frank O’Hara’s poem ‘Katy’ and is later reappropriated by Roger Reeves and Ocean Vuong. In my rendition, I’ve dropped my name, allowing in the love that will someday come to reach toward me, toward my grandmother, toward this moment in time where I feel some sort of grief nearly every day.”
—Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake
Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake
