Today we bring you moving picture & sung poem.
Your socks are by the bed you aren’t in—
the moon shines down next to me,
takes your shape.
I write this while falling asleep,
illuminated by the fake, white-blue light of my phone
I write spoon and don’t know why.
If you were here perhaps you’d tell me
like when you say
I had a half dream
and look up and laugh
when I remind you later.
After dinner I take a fork and poke out
constellations in a bed sheet,
cover our overhead light with
the dark blue cloth and turn on the fan:
a hovering layer of artificial stars.
And maybe it was the time
of year
the body-shocking brain-clouding
heat that made me turn
inward and out
of the sun out of sight
In bed I grabbed an empty
water glass from my nightstand held
the bottom up to my eye
I heard the creaking of the stairs
she appeared
and walked toward me
every strand of hair
each freckle
closer to complete maximum acuity
Like a solo flag in a field I will stand up and still,
proclaim my devotion to the country that is you:
that I pledge my allegiance to.
It could be remembered as the year I killed the ivy: those twisting, thin vines wrapped around the trellis. In a fit of aesthetics I turned the living into dead, brown, shriveled things. I put down my tools. I sat inside, avoided the windows, covered my eyes with my palms when nearing the garden, when the sun led me outside. I am no mother.
A blade of grass touches her face:
a tiny hand through the fence
reaching out.
The sun turns yellow, brighter, white.
Show and tell me what you know.
I said we have a garden growing, let’s not let it die
standing outside.
The water poured down and I took a walk,
let it fall over me to keep conscious, stay alert enough
to notice the mailman moving between the houses and his truck
and back again.
I’m going to take a shower alone.
We wake up early in only grey light,
I cut your hair and you go.
Look at your hands when you miss me.
