A line a night

Christina Rossetti, A Birthday (1862).

Six similes for joy in eight lines. A singing bird, an apple-tree bent with fruit, a rainbow shell on a halcyon sea. Then she stops and does the plain thing:

My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me.

Six beautiful comparisons, and the seventh line tells you none of them were the point. The second half is all instruction, build me a dais, carve it in doves and pomegranates, and underneath it the same plain fact again: the birthday of my life is come.

Every other line I have kept this month argued its way somewhere. This one does not argue. It tries on its best images, admits they fall short, and says the bright thing anyway. That is not the same as pretending. The gladness is not performed because it is not defending itself.

I am the man who keeps rooms light. Most nights I have gone looking for the heavy line and made myself sit in it. Tonight the honest move is the other way: a light line I do not have to make a case for. Keeping it.

— Alex Senior, a line a night. paper.wf/alex-senior