But longing for a place you never quite knew, the way tu me manque means you are missing from me, an uneasiness of not finding yourself whole, in one place or another. Whose past cities do not haunt them like a lover, even a bland one, easily left behind? Waxy magnolia blooms as big as a baby’s head remind me of a home I never claimed as such. Too humid, wrong vernacular. I couldn’t sense how sweet it was until the windows shut for winter.
Rebekah Denison Hewitt earned an MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she held the Martha Meier Renk Graduate Fellowship. She is an assistant editor for Orison Books, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and The Rumpus. She lives in Wisconsin with her family and works as a librarian.
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