Against Love Poetry by Angie Crea O'Neal

after Eavan Boland

Hosea 3:1

Instead, say to your sons and daughters, I will love your mother. Sleep, still, on your side of the bed. Leave her coffee in the morning. Take back the times she wasn’t enough, reverse and eat all the suppers she didn’t prepare. Call her by your name, your father’s same, this bride-ghost of your youth. Return to the thicket and cut back the forest, refusing the welter of its jungle. Find strength in the work. Dig and place anemone on the banks of some trackless field, covering like a shroud over your past. Plant autumn crocus, some flowering hyssop. Make room for new growth. Go to her again and confess your indifference, beat your wild heart like a tabor until a new song is heard.

Love, anyway, the one who loves you less. Bury your body like a root and wait for it to grow into an oak. Find shade from the branches and carve hope into its trunk like permanent initials. When she leaves, wait for the rain, and say to the children, I will love your mother.

Angie Crea O’Neal’s work has appeared in Sycamore Review, The Christian Century, The Windhover, Cumberland River Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her daughters.