Jet Lag
By Maura Monaghan
May 5, 2025
May 5, 2025
|
Looking at the faces looking out the window
as the plane lands, you can tell who is coming home: fleeting relief that the skyline, at least, is still the same. Not the case on the ground these days— silent car rides, aging faces. A tourist doesn’t have to break down the charged space of elapsed years to fit inside their old room. I shove last fall under the bed. there might be room for March in the closet, if I clear out some of the shoes. In June dandelion puffs drift over town, then settle. We used to make wishes on them. They rest on the metal of empty grocery carts abandoned outside Stop & Shop. Alex used to work there, when it was brand new. It was all brand new when we’d ask him to sneak us drinks at the end of a shift always lukewarm; taken from the back so as not to arouse suspicion. The whole world was an evening on the bike path buzzed in thick blue twilight, laughing. Now even the freest half-formed sentiment catches like a t-shirt on loose fence wire, halted by some practical horizon line like the indent of fingertips pressing into bare summer thighs: point of contact curved like the ends of the earth when we’d search for them, on our backs in dewy grass staring at the sky. For the life of us we could not find a limit. |
Maura Monaghan grew up in New York and now lives in London. Her work can be found in HAD, Dishsoap Quarterly, and Drunk Monkeys, and she can be found on Instagram @maura_monaghan.
Author’s Note:
“Jet Lag” is about visiting home after a long time, it’s a sort of lazy walk around your old town remembering things. “Spring 2017” is taking a lighter look at a scenario that felt very nerve-wracking/larger than life at the time, but wanes in importance once you’re looking back at it. I really wanted this poem to have a certain musicality; I hope the sound of it when read aloud evokes the fast pace of “butterflies in your stomach” that I’m trying to illustrate with the words as well.