This Morning

I looked into my roommate’s bedroom—on her

pillow, on the wood floor, in her trashcan there was

vomit. It struck me that the entire house seemed

calm.  Our aprons were still hanging in the kitchen. 

The throw blankets were still folded into a pile of

rectangles on the edge of the couch. Morning light

mixed with the scene.  I couldn't imagine 

waking to this, with the whole house so incredibly
orderly, then leaving only to come back 

to the stench after work. I don't know how to tell

her that the bottle of wine in the kitchen trashcan,
or the man she had over last night
can’t solve things.

When the Earth Tilts and the Snow Comes

Death and taxes are hardly the

cracking truth of 

life. After the ice broke, I was alone.  

I latched onto tidy little one-liners

like the rest of humanity.  But Benjamin 

I’m breathless in the white blur. Rough skin 

forms on my uncertainties. 

snow

when the snow poured from the sky

more intimately

than I could stand

he told me that he loved peanut butter

I blushed.  I couldn't tell him

the truth.

I needed him

        to be more honest.

                  I needed him.

I straightened up.  My room 

was spotless. My hair 

was flattened.  My teeth: sparkling.  

I got all all I wanted. Rigor mortis and

fucking A’s across the board.

in big prairie

do you remember the pulsing fuzzy

little aphids, the “snow-covered”

beech branches—gusting air to watch

the sea-saw sway of tail-ends

wiggling

or standing in the triangle of light (that hits the

center of your parent’s kitchen floor at 5:42 in

July) where we returned to the business of

disco?

I admit it. I rummaged through your childhood

collection of arrowheads, animal-skulls and soft

prismatic pink quartz.  that afternoon you returned

to your teenage-era punk-rock Christian love songs

while bats snaked and swooped, sketching wrinkles in

the pond

we dipped into after we settled on that rectangular

rock where you held my purple-mulberry-stained feet

remarking about my little

toe

barista haikus

The snap trap mundane

slap of minimum wage life

was murdering my

prefrontal cortex—

tamped and pulled and frothed into

nothing. Yep.  Nothing.

Watercoloring

with ballooned belly, jolly-

white-fur-faced “Santa”

between lattes was

sanity.  We quipped with words—

mostly in haiku-

form.  He was like my

grandfather.  I didn’t yet

know that raucous slurp

of entitlement. 

I did not know the slurring

sludge—the earth lust—how

later he would ask

if I would have a “quickie”

with him during work.

He was slinking slip-

shod switchblade “kindness”. Unzipped

synapses misfired.

I lacked pithy words—

boundaries to shed skin, to shake

off black cinder greed.

My anger teetered

between agency and help-

lessness.  The last won:

I simply asked his

order then made a caramel

mocha in silence.

Eratta

Where it says plastic dinosaur

Read the churning snap of nostalgia

Where it says green read

The color of me in sideways-breathed-prayers

Hovering over static water

Where it says water

Read the manic, condescending lectures your father once gave you

That you’re now giving me

When you think of me

You should think of the last drop of light

Think of wind-blown milkweed and nocturnal trains through Ohio cornfields

Where it says soul

You should read dust particles descending in a humid room

The electrified insect-buzz of late summer should be a warning

Put an asterisk there

And where it says blood

Sing Mary Had a Little Lamb

Blot out white as snow

With whatever the hell you want

Forget about the colons:

The large intestines are large enough

To extract meaning

To Novocain-numb

But when you read enough

When you read enough

You should stop.

in the mirror

between shadows and light

I saw the reflection:

how

I ate his words

starving, I ate his words

and

they became my skin

a mighty mitosis

reshaping

a little chin

the freckle above the upper lip

brown irises

I froze

in the suspended hollowness

of a

foreign landscape

once known

I don’t know how long I looked at those

unfamiliar eyes

the smell of you

I held your hand—delicate and cold diseased reality—calling me your cousin

flickering fluorescents; baby blues blinking

clawing at chords stuck in your arm

I want to remember your sugary perfume gripping onto my clothing after our embrace

days later, that scent on the green velvet couch lingering

where you sat telling me about being a farm-girl

with the cornfields and the Mennonites making cheese in their basements

Columbus in the ‘40s—smoking outside of class (because everyone did)

Lima in the ‘60s—with the riots, with the rage, with the risk

I want to remember your forceful independence; marrying someone you met while teaching in Japan

Later divorcing him, to the shock of all

I want to remember summers with you:

Hours of gin rummy and the puckering-shock of Sunkist

The joy of mutual books—

devouring 1984 in at night, warm-light leaking

onto those musty-yellowed pages in your bedroom with your beautiful jewelry and then

the morning sounds of you clanking around and

That smell, the smell of you

Not the reek of shit

Not the shaking to get to the bathroom

Not the time I held your hand to make it

I saw the sagging skin on your thighs for the first time

You wore nothing but a diaper

Shielding you in that hallway

From company’s eyes

I want to cradle your quivering body, covering your panic, hiding your pain

Hiding you

Protecting your dignity

I want to keep you

And how you left

After the subzero temperatures and snowstorms every weekend

You left when the robins came back

An absurd number of them

A thousand of them

All screeching, all chirping next to the care facility’s sloshy pond

In that honey-glow afternoon

While winter left with an unexpected song

During that cyclic hope

You let go