January 15, 2022 - From our archives - Abigail Conklin’s “I Think it Would’ve Made You Happy” - Issue No. 4 - Summer 2018

I Think it Would’ve Made You Happy
Abigail Conklin

I wanted to call, tell you
how impossible it was
to see the ocean
even as it commandeered
every square inch
of air above the headless cage
of the Manhattan Bridge.
How my breath, deepening,
drew air no longer made lazy
by the 90 degree evening,
but urgent zephyrs
of split-open spring’s
first dispatches of the season:
messengers from Pharaoh.
Your daughter, screaming
from the top of the world.