Elizabeth DelConte
Ode to Edna Pontellier
You chose the ocean because
it could hold you in its blue infinity
in a way the sand could not. Or
the road. Or the floors cleaned by a woman who
couldn’t even imagine the buoyancy of water.
One hundred and eighteen years ago you left
your muslin dress on the edge of Grand Isle.
You were Chopin’s music—her words round as
notes—come alive, as hard to hold as a bird determined
to fly, as transient as footprints in the sand.
I don’t judge you for leaving. I know you
Wanted to create, with a tool other than your womb. Love another
unfettered by marriage. Feel the weave of the hammock
rock you to sleep—back to the freedom of childhood—where
you ran your hands along the feathery tops of grass.
Come back, Edna. We need your strong wings.
Adèle is still here, mothering her brood. Women still judged
for daring to be things. Can you hear Mademoiselle Reisz
play? I can, when I sit by an open window and
turn my ear to the wind.
Paint your story, with strokes that dry thick
and dark. Smash a vase on the floor and refuse
to let another sweep away the evidence. Remind
us to fight and only to give the unessential. Never ourselves,
but maybe our lives.
Then you can go back to the shore if you’d like to.
And I’ll brush your footprints away with my own
hand. Or maybe you’ll want them there, under the Creole
sun, for others to find you. Or just the impression of
you—because you don’t owe us anything anyway.
Besides, I’ll still have Chopin’s story. And
I can imagine how her pen pressed into her paper,
scratching against its pebbled, tea-colored surface.
Giving birth to a character who transcended her page
and her pen and who had the last word.
Elizabeth DelConte teaches high school English in Syracuse, New York. She earned an MA in English at The Ohio State University. She recently attended the Kenyon Novel Workshop and spends as much of her free time as she can writing.
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