i

i think of you often and fondly

by Mal Virich

– for Lee

it’s not like you’re the one that got away—
i let you go,
                     i let you go,
                                           i let you go
—but i’m swimming in this lake,
chasing after the echoing ripples,
water in my nose, algae in my eyes,
hair plastered to my face,
and i’m breathing deep between dives,
trying to remember what you sound like,
and i’m pushing forward with everything in me,
more soaked than when we got caught in the rain,
when you gave me a tour of your campus,
and i hope my words survive the waves—
                                           i love you,
                     i love you,
i love you
—and that you will surface again.

Photo by Pascal van de Vendel on Unsplash

Mal Virich

Mal Virich is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying English creative writing, Spanish, and Chicana/o and Latina/o studies. They are queer, non-binary, autistic, and disabled, and much of their writing centers on the complexity of this experience. They received an honorable mention for the 2022 Charles M. Hart Jr. Writers of Promise Award at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their first professional publication was in THE FEAST by The Word’s Faire, July 2024. They were a reader for the Wisconsin Poetry Series in 2022, and they have been a reader for The Madison Review since 2023.