Angie, leaving by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

Angie, leaving

I watch her differently now,
frame her smiling

in the kitchen doorway,
blow drying her hair

in the mirror; I add
a random

image here, image
there to the invisible album

I keep of her inside me:
riding a two- wheeler,

gap of missing teeth.
Now, as she readies

herself for college,
it’s the ordinary I linger on –

her leaving, too large
for any one thing; it’s more

uniform, indiscriminate
something like fog; no

more like snow.
And I don’t see, but feel

the air, full of her
lovely falling.

Isn’t it always like this –
joy and sorrow calling

to each other
across an open field.

How strange the heart’s
equivalents –

she is leaving:
it is snowing.

by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

Editor’s Note: The relationship of disconnected images is one of the strengths of poetry as an art form. In this poem, an act of leaving becomes joy and sorrow, or perhaps snow (and possibly all three simultaneously).