“When I Say Love I Mean El Greco’s The Assumption of the Virgin” by Sara Quinn Rivara (poetry ’02)

When I Say Love I Mean El Greco’s The Assumption of the Virgin

where she rises from a crowd
of men into the sky, how she throws open

her arms and floats into a cloud of gold.
She’s the only woman in the room.

And isn’t that
what I’m supposed to want? to be the only woman

worth lifting into the clouds, bride
on her wedding day, mayflies buzzing

around all our heads.
Mayflies have no mouths.

[… continue reading “When I Say Love I Mean El Greco’s The Assumption of the Virgin” at Sweet: A Literary Confection.]