Alex Carrigan

After Sarah Ghazal Ali

There’s so much I could put onto this page just for you, Darling.
So many ways to tell the world how much I adore you, Darling.

To immortalize you as a muse, a Galatea before the marble is chiseled, 
would be a testament to how you carved yourself into my mind, Darling.

I could compare you to the plants outside my bedroom window—
not planted by you, but by our city— and proclaim you prettier, Darling.

I could exaggerate, amplify, zhuzh up the person who I’m committed to,
greening the eyes of everyone who reads this poem all about my darling,

perhaps inspiring them to go find their own or to remember how much
they too love the person who, in the cold of night, they also call darling.

It’s easy for me to do that, but could you as well? Could you also sit

before your computer and tell the whole world about how I’m your darling?

I know you’re not artistic— you often told me just how much you hated
creative writing assignments in school— but could you please try, Darling?

I know it’s a lot to ask, but there are times I wonder if you only call me
your darling because you feel you have to when I call you my darling.

I know you can do better than me, have done better than me in the past, and
maybe I’m too needy for you, but I really need it in black and white, Darling.

Something that tells me the last two years were worth it, that they weren’t
a commitment until you could find yourself a much more prolific darling.

There’s so much you could put onto this page just for me, Darling.
So many ways to put those anxieties to rest with just the utterance of “darling.”