Laura Chalar
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Madame de Grignan Writes to the Marquise
Mother, I'm stifled under your love.
Your letters jump at me, shout behind my skirts,
tug at my puffed sleeves.
Ma bonne, they cry, you haven't written,
I tremble from head to foot,
sleep has deserted me and so has reason.
Do you not know, the dark ink screams,
how much I love you? It's as if my heart and soul
were being torn from me. Mother, two hundred leagues between us
and my rooms still throb with anguish. I am weighed down
by my grossesse and your sorrow.
Will I die in childbirth? You went distracted
when I almost drowned in the Rhône. But I'd stood against
the wind, seen the stark ruined arches charge forward, felt a strange
joyfulness buoy me over the gray waters.
I end now. M. de Grignan
embraces you. I enclose
a gift of gloves for your fine hands.
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Laura Chalar is a 36-year-old lawyer, writer and translator (not necessarily in that order) from Montevideo, Uruguay, currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.