Distance

by Megan Denese Mealor

I allowed you
to sail me over lake beds,
pull me up cliffs,
across broken bridges.
But I could not kiss you
with any trace of thunder,
even when the sun was
sinking into so many oceans.
You told me once
that there would never be
enough sky, but always,
always too many stars.
You wished you could
count them with your heart.
Love was the sacks
of luminous, worthless stones
you made me carry
up and down
blue mountains.

            Previously published in Digital Americana, Fall 2012

Hermit

I have grown a little eccentric,
a little discontent, I suppose,
since I moved my corner rocking chair
to the very center of the den
near the growling, grinning heater
to cover the carpet’s balding bald spot
and began turning the volume to heaven
to drown out the absence of snoring
in the fireplace glow of yellow-orange
and flashing turquoise tongues.

I must admit,
I have also grown
a little unnerved
by the eerie reverie
of snow-silent cats.

            Previously published in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, April 2015

A Faith, Rotting

She wore the kind of cross necklace
you would find in a bargain box,
the holy rejects of sacrilegious salesgirls,
their pearls undulating, effulgent.
She didn’t care that the gold shed
itself into a bastard green, branded
and belligerent against her pale
butterfly of a throat. To her, there
was a beautiful irony in the decay
of something so consecrated with
sadness. To her, there was no
religion without the ululation
of a mother’s lamentation, rotting
into romance, idolatry in the
immaculate inferiority–a necklace
losing sight of heaven faster than
she did the night God weighed
her losses, wrote them into being.

            Previously published in Deep South Magazine, April 2014

BIO

Megan Denese Mealor echoes and erases in her native land of Jacksonville, Florida. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and a current Best of the Net Poetry nominee, Megan’s poetry, fiction, and photography have been featured in literary journals worldwide, most recently Across the Margin, Brazos River Review, Typehouse Magazine, The Disappointed Housewife, and The Wise Owl.  She has authored three poetry collections: Bipolar Lexicon (Unsolicited Press, 2018), Blatherskite (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, 2019), and A Mourning Dove’s Wishbone (forthcoming from Cyberwit, 2022). A survivor of bipolar disorder, Megan’s main mission as a writer is to inspire others feeling stigmatized and paralyzed for their mental health. She and her husband of ten years, Tony, their 9-year-old son, Jesse, who was diagnosed with autism at age three, and three mollycoddled rescue cats coexist in a cozy, cavernous townhouse ornamented with vintage ads for Victorian inventions.