Quarantine Aubade with Ophelia
“Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.”
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, William Shakespeare
Years ago, a man gave you a card with
those lines Hamlet wrote to Ophelia in it
and would never reveal if it meant he loved
you or not. But lately you’re the one aware
how little you concede emotion, expect the men
you date to know by reading your poems and
the subtext of what you tell them. Until this
happened, you never thought you would message
a man late at night and offer to send him your
extra bottle of hydrogen peroxide. And while
you would give it to anyone who needed it,
you were offering it to him while drinking
vodka in your living room five hours after
the last message you sent, which was also about
disinfectant. In John Everett Millias’s Ophelia,
she is on her back in water, arms open in a pose
flavored by painted martyrs, white flowers on
the river bank, red ones floating out of her
loosened grip. This is an aubade in name only:
you wake alone each morning, your thoughts cut
flowers in your hands, drowning in your own bed.
Jen Finstrom is both part-time faculty and staff at DePaul University, working at the UCWbL as Outreach Coordinator. She was the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine for thirteen years, and recent publications include Dime Show Review, Eunoia Review, Rust + Moth, Stirring, and Thimble Literary Magazine, with work forthcoming in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine and Silver Birch Press.