By Emily Sernaker

Featured art: Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies by Claude Monet

I try not to think about falling in love
too much, although sometimes I look
at pictures of Giverny.

You can visit you know.
See Claude Monet’s lily pad garden,
that famous footbridge.

I enjoy a good trip with my girlfriends.
A walk with my sweet mother.
But I want to see Giverny

with my partner. Whom I haven’t met.
Who might not want to fly 3,585 miles
to see a lily pad garden in France,

all of those pastels up close and floating.
Sometimes I check the website
confirming it’s open. That anyone can go.

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Emily Sernaker is a writer and activist. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Ms. Magazine, GOOD Media, Rattle, and Politics and Prose District Lines. She currently studies poetry at Pacific University. http://www.emilysernaker.com

Originally published in NOR 22.