This is the same space we
slept in each time we
pitched a tent or
closed a door:
moonlight bright enough
to illuminate a sundial;
a warm wind
only barely lifting the
hair on my arm:
a breath, a breeze.
Oh that single bead of moisture
dropping on my last rib,
flowers mashing into
a colorful pulp under
your heels, my knees,
on scorched desert rock,
blue in the light;
a tiny frog
with its tail still attached
crawls from the charred scars
of a desert flame,
refuses to be moved--
or saved.
Ours was a summer of
dashing across three feet of kitchen
to the right spices,
the smoking pan,
the scorched saute,
reaching around you to get the salt
and having you trap me,
at that inopportune moment of
overcooking,
pinning me against the thin metal that
held the extinguisher--
we ran the risk of setting it all ablaze.
And now I sit
a thousand miles away
on a down comforter,
thirty yards from the nearest kitchen,
breasts feeling limp,
and I am damp,
a hollow bird,
shivering, lonely
in a cowbird's nest,
sopping,
feathers clinging in mats--
but the curve of a wing,
the lines of the skull,
each is grotesquely
Becoming...
All will someday drown or dry.
I purge;
Fingers swell at the release
of the long unwritten word.
(Have you forgotten?
Have I?)
Eyes soon ache with
last night's, week's, month's tears
and oh, uncertainty.
Hair falls from stress in tangles,
lining my carpet like tumbleweeds
and somewhere, back in Arizona,
someone who has just moved in
is adjusting their watch for
daylight savings time,
And I am a thistle,
deserty,
arching and accumulating,
and now I roll,
tumble, scratch,
and soon I will decompose
and recompose
and I will someday fertilize
rich jasmines
that will grow
along your walls
and bed
and cutlery,
and I will overcome
everything.