by Cristina Nehring (October 2025)
–
For M.B.
=
You were the star
To my wandering bark,
I trusted you
To hold your place.
Your watching
Over my course
Gave it a sort of dignity,
A kind of grace.
–
Every blunder was benign,
Every dead end
A possibility.
Every false start
Made you smile
And made me wait
A longer while.
Now you’re gone,
–
The night’s opaque,
And all my errors
Turned back to terrors.
Not the long way to
A blessed isle,
But a shortcut
To the vertical river
Of the unredeemed.
–
Table of Contents
Cristina Nehring‘s most recent book is The Child Who Never Spoke: 23 1/2 Lessons in Fragility. She is also the author of A Vindication of Love which made the front page of the New York Times Book Review as well as two books in French. She writes for Atlantic, Harper’s, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Paris with her daughter. See more at www.cristinanehring.net.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
