Ode to You
By: Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
I wanted to write you a letter filling you in
on all that’s gone on over the years,
but according to your sister, who emailed me
last week, you’re dead. I’ve been searching
for you so long with no word back, I wasn’t
surprised, yet I have to say I began to imagine
in a hopeful way that you might be alive
somewhere, lying on a sandy beach sipping
margaritas, too high on alcohol to answer back.
I’ve been wanting to tell you how much I miss
our old days when roomed together in school
and the parties we went to braless and barefoot,
skipping over wet grass in the moonlight,
mornings sleeping hungover you more
than me, because you were always more
of a partier, your arms outstretched across
your twin bed trying to hold my hand annoyed
at the space between, scrunching your nose
like a sign for me to move over, closer to you
so our fingers could touch. I am guessing our
mothers are up there with you too, since they’ve
both been gone for decades; I’m sort of jealous
that you all get to hang out, have tea and crackers
share all the details of our youthful days, and theirs
days when they were paying for our education
while we were dating our professors, since
that kind of thing wasn’t taboo just yet. Hey
it’s nice to have this chance to look out
the window and think of you living behind
a murky sky, managing the way the stars
hang at night, gathering new stories
to tell, opening a raincloud one day
saying, hello friend, I’ve been waiting
for you.
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program She has authored seventeen poetry collections including six full-length manuscripts. In 2012 she won the Red Ochre Press Com-petition with her chapbook Before I Go to Sleep. In 2019 her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards and in 2021 her full-length collection Alice in Ruby Slippers was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief for both the Orchards Poetry Journal and Tule Review.