My Guy and My Girl

A Villanelle

by Cristina Nehring (March 2025)

Woman at the Window (Gustave Caillebotte, 1880)


My dearest love
, don’t let me know
We’ve spent two decades beating round the bush:
We’re doomed to distance, that I know.

We have a child, an angel, you must grasp
She’s tethered to you, darling,
She loves you fast, however far we go.

Her name’s Eurydice and she loves you plain
She shrieks your name nine times a day
We’re doomed to distance, that I know.

She yells in joy; she yells in tears
She smiles her Macdonald smile
And begs for you to stay a while.

I love you too, my priceless heart,
I would we were joined closely at the lips
We’re doomed to distance that I know.
She loves you fast however far we go.

Table of Contents

 

Cristina Nehring‘s most recent book is The Child Who Never Spoke: 23 1/2 Lessons in Fragility. She is also the author of A Vindication of Love which made the front page of the New York Times Book Review as well as two books in French. She writes for  Atlantic, Harper’s, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Paris with her daughter. See more at www.cristinanehring.net.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast

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