Maladaptive Coping Mechanism
Abbie Langmead
(after “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop)
Maybe if I just follow the
rules on how to make this art
I will not feel it. I will not be afraid of
the fact that the opposite of winning is losing
and God knows, I have lost. It’s sad, isn’t
it? I’ve convinced myself that hard
things can be made simple with systems to
guide me, rules that I can master
Suddenly: I cheat death. Then
the people I love live in practice
because I am not losing
them if they are right here. Farther,
than I would like, but not losing
for as long as I work, resurrect them faster:
Cobequid Bay, Lake Geneva, only places,
for the mourners to stand alone and
speak love back into existence with names,
finding a space to hide, to live and where
the worst things are transformed. It
has rules, you know. The elegy was
made for others to feel something, once. You
have suffered enough, but this form was meant
to let others understand the unfathomable, to
show them the places you hope they don’t travel
to like you have. When I write about them, none
of the tragedy erodes the line between my sense of
self and the feeling that maybe I deserve it. These
grasps at immortality are foolish, but they will
give me the feeling that I’ve grieved right. Bring
on the glory for my trials, without praise it’s just disaster.
Abbie Langmead (she/they) is a Sapphic Jewish writer originally from Boston, MA, where they studied creative writing at Emerson College. She currently lives in Dublin, Ireland, after studying Modern and Contemporary Literature at Trinity College Dublin. Their poetry has recently appeared in Shot Glass Journal, Northern New England Review, Trace Fossils Review, and others.
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