Just a sliver of light in the sky tonight when I walk the dog. More than usual
he sniffs everything, soaking up the news of the day
without passing judgment, taking it in like he’s never smelled anything
quite like it.
I hum an incantation—
wherever you go, there you are
as my feet nestle into the earth’s scalp
trying to feel how deep the roots go.
He continues to sniff the pinecones and needles scattered around us,
nose dripping with wonder and the feeling of being on the inside of a secret
only the earth can tell.
-
-
These days,
I’m lucky to get caught on some tree branch or awning.
I was always tethered to some kind of paper weight. Now:
new family, new home, new baby, new love—
and my strings slip quickly through loose fingers. -
was not first rate.
We didn’t wake each day
and thank God for bringing us together
or embrace passionately at the airport
before a long goodbye.
I know you were unenthused about my drinking
and felt awkward rubbing my back when I cried.
But there were days when I could hear you humming the jingle
I’d been singing all week—
and midnights when I’d find my indifferent foot tapping
to your made-up beat. -
When we sit down to dinner you are a stranger
from another century. You describe your method
for harvesting wheat—
reaping,
threshing,
winnowing,
and I wax poetic about the worthless chaff left behind.
Surely,
there’s an expiration date on this.
We can’t go on this way— two parts of a Janus particle
bound to each other in this mutually destructive way.
One day you’ll start crafting schematics for your combine
and I will find a way to make use of the otherwise
useless. -
When he’s away, I can spend hours in ecstasy
not thinking of his body or the way his fingertips feel on my scalp,
but my body—slender, soft, sensual
silk draped over my breasts, a perfect handful
of the season’s best strawberries reflected on my
imperfect skin. -
When you read that line from Ada Limón’s “What I didn’t know before,”
the hair on my arms stands straight up. I’m not talking peach fuzz and ant hills,
I mean long, dark bristles stretching toward the sky making moguls
even Mikaël Kingsbury would second guess. Skin up the mountain,
I’ll meet you at the top. Let’s see how fast we fall. -
I don’t know how to be in love. Is it a prerequisite for doing someone’s laundry?
For folding the jeans, pajamas,
tucking bra straps behind the cups and lightly placing them over the others
for twisting the neck of the shirt ever so slightly around the tiny hanger hooks
because we were too cheap to buy the velvet-lined ones?I remember when I hated doing my laundry. Now I do it for both of us
(and I still hate it).Remember when you’d wake up on a Sunday morning
and find a pile of clean clothes at the foot of your bed?
How your mother placed them there ever so softly at 7 AM
so she wouldn’t wake you—
so you could get one more hour of sleep after a long week of homework and soccer?I throw your clothes on the bed—sometimes a sock smacks you in the face.
I don’t know how to be in love. -
What do you think about multiverse theory?
Somewhere we could be finishing an argument about marriage—
not its meaning or its roots—but where we should say our vows
or where you might say them with someone else and I might be there for support
(or not).Is there one where you never showed me how to change my washer fluid
but I just knew?
I’m a painter, but I can also throw clay on the wheel and form a delicate tea cup.
Are you an economist?
Maybe there’s a universe where you cried during Annie Hall,
and when I reached out to touch you, you pulled me in and just held me there.
Maybe you are dead.You could be overworked—me, bored.
How did we get here?In the grand scheme of infinity, what would you give up
to look at me and feel that knot in your stomach
that you just don’t want to untie? -
I can’t remember what you were wearing in that tired inn,
what you smelled like, if either of us were sober enough to lock the door.
But the pain I felt in my abdomen when we were splayed out laughing
stabs me sometimes still.I read once that a mother skink will fight off predators until eventually,
if the attacks are relentless,
she’ll eat her own eggs.What if every other moment between us has been like that tired skink—
realizing she has no other choice than to eat her own happiness,
to destroy her love so that she might keep going alone? -
Today I think I could reach out and touch that piece of hair falling over your eyes,
twist it into place behind your temple and hold it back with a bobby pin.
Today your voice is a temple.
Today I hear vibrations in your larynx before you even have a chance to speak.
Today I think I could reach out and grab your words, twist them into carbon fiber
and build a concrete monastery out of everything you say.
Today I could lock us both inside.
Today I could reach out and touch that tinge of loneliness falling over your eyes,
twist it together with mine and hold it back with a bobby pin.
Today I could reach out and touch you.
Mellifluous Lit 