Opera Singer

In La Rondine, you play Magda as a milquetoast—

that is, as a swallow before flight, building nest and

calcium shell. Songbirds, you understand.

You wear a tangerine gown during your aria: 

Chi il bel sogno di Doretta. Beautiful dream,

but your throat is fat with misery. 

After curtain, the stage director bids you wear a mini dress,

and you oblige. But you also cover yourself with a sable coat

from the costume department—it was used in Eugene Onegin last season. 

It falls to your ankles as if truly meant for Russian winter and pistol duels,

or—more likely—because measured to fill the broader shoulders of a baritone.

But you?

You are meant to simper

for the FRIENDS OF THE OPERA after-party. Pretend to drink Champagne.

Still wearing Ramboldo’s pearls, you think of society paper murder, of

ghosts in the opera balconies. Notwithstanding, you remain tranquil

of face. Impassive. Smiling as bright and cold as Neptune’s largest moon.

They loved you. They love you. They are going to love you,

despite the misery. Glamour covers the unpardonable sin of being

beautiful and sad and testy all at once—these emotions agglomerate,

held tight within your singing chest. 

There is a time before you tried to understand the world 

as leitmotif and vocal fry and arias and parts to play. When all you had was

in your hands: puppy doll, soothing blanket, warmed vanilla milk.

And you wonder if you can unite two unlike things: the diva, the mother;

the songbird, the clucking hen; the unzipping of your dress—too tight 

in the abdomen—and the zip! of a newborn’s footie pajamas.

It does not stand to reason that this is the end.

And you don’t know why you’re so annoyed

to abandon your childhood hypocorism. 

To both love and wish away the lemon-sized fetus, its thirteen weeks.

To then hold your baby where the art used to live.

Emily Bulicz-Arnelien