Anniversary, Alveoli by Tanis MacDonald
A few weeks before Valentine’s Day, as part of my poet laureateship, I wrote a blog post on how to write a love poem, acknowledging (then promptly ignoring) the fact that I may not be the best person to provide instruction on such an endeavour. Imagine my delight when I learned that my post had encouraged a writer I admire immensely to recommence her habit of writing an annual love poem. I was doubly delighted when she—the award-winning multi-genre writer Tanis MacDonald—agreed to share her poem here on my blog.
Thank you, Tanis! Everyone who reads this blog, I hope Tanis’ poem inspires you to read and write more love into the world. We need it, always.
Anniversary, Alveoli
Tanis MacDonald
For J, Valentine’s Day 2025
February blew in. I coughed
and slept all afternoon, self-serenaded
by my wheezing alveoli,
lung harmonium with two long
notes. You pulled the sheets taut, flannel,
a striped set we bought
one Wednesday on the coast
before Eaton’s closed down, after lunch
at Murchie’s and before you went
back to work. I drove our new
sheets home and wrote until four and then
packed the sheets and
everything else when we moved here,
middle-edge south of north country, now it’s
twenty-seven years
and our love could vote anywhere
in the world, tick the boxes next to first date,
Feb. 14, it snowed, we kissed
on the corner of River and Osborne
and everyone had a fucking opinion about us.
Oh the scandal, the big hoo-haw.
It’s February, and I wake up, stumble
to the bath. I know you will hear the water running
and come find me.
*
Come find me. the water’s running, what you hear
is a scandal stumbling into hoo-haw
to be a fucking opinion and everyone had a River
to kiss at the corner of February.
Fourteen first dates, remember who ticked the boxes
and who voted, we were anywhere
in the world, our love could north country, our love
twenty-seven years of this middle
edge south, love a drive home, a chapter of lunch
at Murchie’s, you went back
before the coast, after we pulled sheets and
set into talk, long into flannel
and out of wheeze, an alveoli serenade.
I, February. All afternoon.
Tanis MacDonald.
About Tanis MacDonald:
Tanis MacDonald (she/her) is the author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female and six other books. A free-range literary animal, Tanis has won the Open Seasons Award twice: once in 2021 for her essay of female friendship and music fandom, and again in 2025 for her essay on adoption and ancestry. She has twice been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize and took an honourable mention in the Pavlick Poetry Prize in 2021. Tanis was raised in Treaty One territory and now lives as a grateful guest on Haldimand Treaty land, near the Grand River in southwestern Ontario, where she teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her next book, Tall, Grass, Girl, is forthcoming with Book*hug Press.
Learn more about Straggle!