Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Do not care if you just arrive in your skeleton.
Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you.
Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.
Like you used to make me when you were alive.
Love to feed you. Sit over steaming
bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes
covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you.
Would love to walk to the post office with you.
Bring the ghost dog. We’ll walk past the waterfall
and you can tell me about the after.
Wish you. Wish you would come back for a while.
Don’t even need to bring your skin sack. I’ll know
you. I know you will know me even though. I’m
bigger now. Grayer. I’ll show you my garden.
I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you
want to jump in? I’ll rake it for you. Miss you
standing looking out at the river with your rake
in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket.
They’re hip now. I can bring you a new one
if you’ll only come by. Know I told you
it was okay to go. Know I told you
it was okay to leave me. Why’d you believe me?
You always believed me. Wish you would
come back so we could talk about truth.
Miss you. Wish you would walk through my
door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through
the pipes.

Originally published in Poetry Magazine.

Read other poems by Gabrielle Calvocoressi in The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart or Rocket Fantastic, available for purchase online.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s poem, part of their “Miss You” series, captures the longing for a lost loved one with tenderness and fearless vulnerability. Through the listing of intimate details from the relationship—the “shrimp saganaki” they once made, the now-hip “puffy blue jacket” they once wore—Calvocoressi brings the lost one back to life, however briefly, in each reader’s imagination. The fact that the title serves as the first line, and the casual tone of the poem, which often omits the “I” from each sentence, both make it sound as if the speaker is writing an extended postcard to someone who’s just gone away for a short while. Though the poem itself serves as an invitation for the loved one to return in whatever form they wish to take, I also see this (and the other brilliant “Miss You” poems in the series) as a call for all of us to cherish the specific, small moments we share with our own loved ones, if only to keep their memory so vividly alive inside us, we might expect them to walk through the door again at any instant.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Write your own “postcard” to a lost loved one, or someone you miss, using a similarly intimate tone and the specific details that bring them back to you. What were the things you loved to do together? What are the specific moments you’d recreate with them if you could?

Photo by Levi Strand.

ABOUT THE POET: Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of the poetry collections Rocket Fantastic (Persea Books, 2017); Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books, 2009), which was a finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Persea Books, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award and winner of the Connecticut Book Award in Poetry. They are the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer’s Award, a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review, and a residency from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Calvocoressi teaches at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Carrboro, North Carolina.

POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.

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