A Long Beginning

by Ágnes Cserháti

Late last summer—
I remember well the lanky shade of love’s third moulting,
buttons scattered… nymph-like and lightsore,
breath touching breath, the low sun draping
over the arc of a fleeting dog-eared
cloud, your surrender
to fingertips and slow lips wet with soundless whistles,
a single reed struck through and trembling, long-limbed—
lying flat, flung, then furled
in the distanced space
between us.

*

It began with December and snow, your hands spread like ferns,
the small of your back curled into your knees, curled
between mine, adjusting
to the given space. I breathed in the arc
of your mouth,
pulled at your tucked shirt,
at time, unfurling and exhilarate, your spores
woken and keening, marked for one course alone.
Dishevelled, we caught for air,
collected our fronds,
taking in the hours
apart.

*

Then there was the proverbial barn, slatted with light
and silence, its walls of red hemlock roughsawn and yielding,
words dwelling among us (and we among them),
our heads heavy on feathered down,
your wooly eyes shut and reaching
into mourning. To borrow from you
was to shape words from you lips
swelling a soft touch,
sleep’s steady awakening
a long beginning.

Ágnes Cserháti’s writing has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, PN Review, and the New York Quarterly, among others. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition and Vallum Poetry Award. She won the Hart House Poetry Competition twice and the 2025 John Lent Poetry/Prose Award. Her chapbook, unremembered, was published with Frog Hollow Press in 2019 as part of their Dis/Ability series and Pilgrim Vox by Kalamalka Press in 2026. She is associate editor for Amphora, the Alcuin Society’s journal on the book arts, and founder and editor of Rufus Books Publishing (@rufusbooks_ca). You can find her on Instagram @agnescserhati.