E.C. Gannon

An Ode to Tallahassee, Florida

If Tallahassee were a woman, I’d marry her, 

and we’d live together in a double-wide in 

a town about 20 minutes away from X.

She’d be a smoker. She’d wear a crop top 

and cutoff shorts, both a size and a half too 

small. She’d dye her hair often enough for it 

to fry, thin, fall out of her head. She’d make 

the best food I’d have ever eaten and enough 

of it to feed the whole trailer park. You never 

know if people are gonna stop by, she’d say 

and walk out the screen door; she would never 

smoke inside. And no one would ever really 

stop by either. She’d stop undressing in front 

of me after our tenth wedding anniversary.

I’d never ask why. I’d convince myself I was 

afraid of the answer. Maybe I wouldn’t really

care. We’d have sex in front of the TV on 

Tuesdays and Fridays so she wouldn’t miss

anything. I’d compete for her attention with

paternity tests and pawn dealers. I’d try to

explain that any time I’d hear one of the shows’

opening themes, I’d start to get excited, but 

she’d get caught up on the fact that I didn’t 

know the breed of Pavlov’s dogs. A pomeranian

is a whole lot different from a rottweiler, she’d say 

and step outside to smoke before I could reply

not in principle. Not in psychology. She’d get 

sick and refuse to go to the doctor because she 

would be afraid of her own mortality. This fear 

would be abstract, inarticulable. She’d die of 

lung cancer in her late fifties, and every day 

for the rest of my life, I’d walk the mile to the 

cemetery, unfold my lawn chair, and read 

passages of Whitman to her headstone, and though 

I don’t believe in anything, if my hypothetical, 

metaphorical, dead wife could hear the rhythm 

of “Song of Myself,” she’d stop her haunting and 

listen not because she’d understand but because 

she’d know how much it had always meant to me.

E.C. Gannon was born in Boston and raised in New Hampshire and is now pursuing a degree in English and political science at Florida State University. Her work has previously been published in The Kudzu Review and Oddball Magazine.