Marion in Alaska, July 2021

Marion’s got a red bandana over her forehead.
Marion pees a little when she laughs.
Marion dunks her head in the glacial water.
Marion and I were strangers a month ago
but now we love each other & we say so
while cooking oatmeal or shaking out bug bodies from our tents.
Marion picks up any rock with a sediment line
and calls them happiness pebbles
with such conviction I think that
it's an official term. It’s not. They just make her smile.
Marion kicks all through the night
& not even the sleeping bag contains her fluttering.
It’s hard to be mad because she calls my bruises love spots.
Walking long miles in the rain, I imagine her as an old woman
& Freud can say what he wants about that
but Marion holds up. In my head, she bucks the tradition.
She has grey hair down to her waist.
She eats purple pickled onions from jars and homemade kombucha.
I dream of old lady Marion and her rescue great dane.
I imagine her still spinning,
brushing her teeth with finger in the pouring rain.
In the imaginary she is still loud and giggly
& always somehow able to pee whenever I needed to go.
She will still hate to think anyone is lonely.
She will sit on her porch and laugh with a gaggle of admirers while fireflies argue for her attention.
Beads of light around her. Even in fifty years,
I want nothing in her to be fragile.
I want Marion forever,
despite the container of her.
I want nineteen year old Marion dancing
while she walks towards the campsite.
I can’t bear the impossible not-nineteen,
a Marion not at least part this:
head tipped back for the sun,
humming disco under her breath.
I want to hold the little spoon
of her face. I want to say,
Marion, you are going somewhere beautiful,
fast. Take me with you.
Remember me. Nineteen, too––
both of us always
how we are.

Mia Nelson graduated Dartmouth College with an English degree in June 2022. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review and The Santa Fe Literary Review. Her writing has been recognized by Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and The Poetry Society London. She is at work on a novel.