Benediction
Michael Constantine McConnell At the church where we met, fell in love, held hands for four years, I fell apart. Sunlight tripped through stained glass, buzzed around my head, landed on the bent and rusted halo hung like slain albatross over a broken horn. No one could see through the invisibility cloak choking me for six months, only a cloud of gunmetal ashes mushrooming into the ceiling. I dreamed you behind the piano where another player played, felt you touching Chopin’s nocturnes against my chest and collar, muting your naked feet against mine on the first cool morning of autumn with coffee brewing in our kitchen and hours waiting to be forgotten. And days etched with laughter, tickling, climbing through each other. Weeks raining against concrete, spreading into puddles crisped by evening streetlights. Months circling the sun like moths. Years that ended before our race began, each one punctuating, echoing our inevitable wedding engagement mantra. On your mark. Get ready. Set. Go. |
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About the Author:
Michael Constantine McConnell’s literature has been featured in The Best of Electric Velocipede, Body and Soul: Narratives of Healing from Ars Medica, Reading Lips and Other Ways to Overcome a Disability, and Solace in So Many Words, for which he was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize in the essay category. His most recent poems have appeared in the New Plains Review, the Lindenwood Review, and THAT Literary Review. Michael is currently working on his dissertation for a doctoral degree in Developmental Education at Texas State University, where he is editor of the Journal of College Academic Support Programs.
Michael Constantine McConnell’s literature has been featured in The Best of Electric Velocipede, Body and Soul: Narratives of Healing from Ars Medica, Reading Lips and Other Ways to Overcome a Disability, and Solace in So Many Words, for which he was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize in the essay category. His most recent poems have appeared in the New Plains Review, the Lindenwood Review, and THAT Literary Review. Michael is currently working on his dissertation for a doctoral degree in Developmental Education at Texas State University, where he is editor of the Journal of College Academic Support Programs.