your gasp
you inhale sharply
i fall to my knees
banging against the tub
gripping the plastic shower sheet
you scare me
you say, eyes panicked
i kiss your neck
i love you
The old owner of the restaurant
backs his way through the double doors
of the kitchen carrying a large gray tub.
Hot stuff coming through, he announces
in a loud voice then wrestles the contents
into the empty ice cooler.
Why do you say hot stuff? I asked.
Because nobody gets out of the way for cold stuff!
In her green brocade robe, she makes notes on the kitchen
calendar. Her tiny, upright writing looks like Einstein’s.
She plays peek-a-boo with my two-year-old
as he chortles in his high chair.
“Don’t ever smoke,” she tells me, tapping ashes
into the ceramic dish I made for her in Girl Scouts.
I never hide in her closet or peek into
her jewelry box.
My son wheels his trike around her patio, chasing
the soap bubbles she blows.
When she reads me the story about the possom
at the bottom of the barrel, we both laugh.
Standing at the stove over a steaming kettle, she stirs
strips of wool she’ll hook into rugs.
In her lingerie drawer, she keeps a soup can label, brown-haired woman,
smiling. “You’re as pretty as she is,” I’d said.
For Roberta Wilson Gilkison Falk
It’s in plain sight
A simple conversation
Cups of coffee
Doughnut judgment
A Band-Aid on the knee
A dark circle under the eye
“You look so tired,”
“Oh, I used to wear my hair like that,”
I could never be so cruel
Tiny pokes
Add up
“Oh, you’re a real original,”
“So weird,”
I could never
I left the window wide open
I told you
I
Felt
Like
You
Didn’t
Care
When I spoke the truth I said,
“I’m willing to work this out,
You are my blood”
With my number still there
You
Said,
“Take
Care”
But you still tell others we are close
It is what it is
I’ve always known it doesn’t matter
And I’m not sure
Why I tried
I close my eyes,
For only a moment
I see life,
Two years from now,
All the vacations
And sunshine,
And I’m happy
In my dreams,
When I wake up,
I blink,
And for a moment
I think I see me,
In ten years,
In the florida sun,
My career
And my wedding ring,
The house on the hill
And the bank account is filled,
And my smile is wider
Than the grand canyon,
I think I have more fun
In my fantasies
Than down on earth,
In my real life,
But if I don’t blink,
And keep my eyes wide open,
Maybe I’ll finally live
In my own body.
The tricycle, borrowed from Nana’s garage, flakes
black paint and lists port as I pedal up and down
along the uneven sidewalks in her neighborhood
of shotgun houses. I’m alone. It’s quiet, the air syrupy.
A three-story house, white siding, orange shutters, looms,
and I labor up the steep driveway, drawn by its profusion
of lush greenery, blossoms, August brilliance — that fade
to gray foreboding as I reach the top and turn to face
a configuration of clock-works, pendulums, wheels, cogs,
springs, weights, levers, emitting a cacophony of ringing,
grating, ticking, throbbing, pounding — to the racing cadence,
ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump, of my heart as I wake.
The void that is vengeance
Dreams
full of dreams
When life begins
Not always the grandeur
Maybe
Just
mundane and
soft
