Bedspread

I am wearing the little cuffs you use to danger me with, to make us

different from the couple downstairs. This design is wearing me

out. My mind wanders and lusts after a normalcy this situation

cannot interpret, here in the slow summer heat with a dog

to my right and a pair of sweatpants to my left. I wanted this

to be more about you. There is a decade to cover, or at least

a fortnight, desire seeping through our skin until even the sheets

reek of it. Oh stars, brief lamentations of injury or pulse,

the way the universe tricks us into appreciation and then

throws an oncoming train or a vase at us. The house lifts

with the dust of our routine. All our angles are turned

down like a night bed, the wish of our bodies filled

already with ordinary details like who will visit

come spring and who has stopped drinking

long enough to conspire against us.

Injuries we don’t know we have

I can hear everything in your mouth, the stars and the desire.

There is no curing what you have given me, here on the fortieth

floor where we went about our love like a noon mistake.

I was naked and reeling from your touch, blank as a tulip.

The hospital wagon could not match my despair, that odd

sound emanating from me when you left me there like a small

ship. Now, we are married, the wee hours drawing us

together, comfortable as sin and darker, even.

My mother swore I would marry someone cowing.

We are condensation, a brief movement on petals.

I will transcribe our longing while it exists, here at the table

where we chat and create codes, the morning light

documenting how we will smash ourselves against

each other later, those fat waves visible

from the window.

Flood

I am traveling the cliffs of secrecy and regret, those serialized

records in the back of my parents’ storage locker. Once, the locker

was guided into flood by some force greater than metal, cloaked

in desire for erasure. The alleged accounts of my youth

were destroyed, hindering memory and remorse. The opportunity

for an ongoing surveillance of the past remains in the small

number of items that survived the influx of water. My sponsor

says to make index cards with everything I miss written

in pretty colors. I draw my grandmother, alive and in her rocking

chair, cheating at cards. I draw my first cat, Rodendo, pig-plump

and red. I am at a loss as what else to include, wedding

gifts and roofies I was slipped freshman year of college.

It is mobilizing to remember the evidence of where I came

from, like documenting a birth I was a part of but not witness to.

The Dream of Feng shui

Once I invented a system for cats to Feng shui

the living room. I had a lawyer entranced, on top

of the Empire State Building. He had a fantastic

profession, one I had shirked. His view 
included all of New Jersey, which impressed 
me. We never made the cat toys – they required 

a plastic mold which neither of us was willing 

to commit to. I was disappearing at the time, 

literally refusing to eat anything but pasta

and cereal. My boyfriend, the enabler, would lie

on our living room floor, which was also 
the bedroom, ruining any chance of harmony. 
I was wafer thin and could practically walk 
through him. A friend was seeing an anger 
therapist. He got to yell and throw things 
during sessions. I was jealous to the point 
of emulating him. What I needed was a cat 
to throw a toy around the room and correct 
the energy. I had trouble taking myself seriously. 
My job consisted of a man yelling at me 
through a glass tube. It was like science, 
only less kind. I didn’t keep in touch 

with the lawyer, and our dreams of plastic 
molds passed by like reedy clouds.  

My jealousy prohibits me from nostalgia

I am new to these quiet friendships of yours. I don’t feel lucky 

today, running around the office without my rabbit’s foot, 

having fought with you much of the night. The police ended 

up in my dream, slamming their activities into a man 

who wasn’t you. I’m hesitant to say the word earthquake

for fear it will happen, everything will cross together in a mess.

I don’t have a window to watch natural disasters, only the kinds

we create lying in bed with our backs to each other, the dog

between us like a red flag. The year the locusts invaded our

backyard, I watched from my upstairs window. I was avoiding

a meeting with my father. My nails were painted at the time, 

and I was trying to clump all the boys in my school 

together so I could control them into liking me. 

There’s a difference between caring and caring too much. 

This is the last night I’ll love you, coming to bed clean. 

We’ll say our farewells in the dark, familiar and kind 

against the new sheets. I will bite my cuticles while you move 

against me, rubbing my mouth into the skin. When you turn 

on the lights, my hands will be hideous with grief.

Traveling in daylight

There is distance between us, the size of a sandwich

or a child’s fist. I feel my lungs echoing the cold,

the punish of air that comes in through the window.

This morning, the petals of my birthday roses, aching

open in their flocked vase. I wanted to reach in

and destroy them in order to love them. Some people

are addicted to alcohol; I have our union to tend to.

I will flee this car if I need to. I’m not different from you,

but I am willing to turn myself into a weapon to work

out my issues. Once, I longed to live in a trailer,

able to see everything like God. It is not necessary

to repair the damage, what sits on the seat between

us, neither the dog nor the groceries we have packed

for our enjoyment. There is still pleasure to be derived

from one another, even in this circle of need, this

unflattering circumstance I have found myself in.

The stars are waving their flags, giving

themselves over to defeat. Nothing can house

all I offer, not the doctor in his coat or the lamp

staying up all night with me. I will cross over state

lines with you, will follow my jealousy into the wish

and pull of evening. There I will be, splayed across

your mother’s sofa, the light straining

the road and in the marshes, everything kind

having suffered itself out.

The drive upstate

The drive upstate

 

There is the desire to feel what I cannot stomach,

not just this animal but everything that lies unspoken

between us. We climb back into the car, the silence

almost audible like rain on snow. The drive is long,

another quiet trauma between us. When we arrive,

I see there is a bit of blood on my hand. I didn’t know

I had reached that far into suffering. I wipe the blood

on my skirt before you can see it. I am not a doctor,

or a maker of lungs, but when I scream inside,

even the past can hear me.