Whose voice was that, here, where I lie alone? Look at you, said Eros. Scared, shy, alone. I dreamt my dreaming of you Brought us together. I love you as only dust can love you.
Keen eyes read the top row, staring straight ahead until the words unfocus. G, then something, then D . . . If only that middle letter were in focus! On this eye chart, every focal point is a vanishing point. Desire dilates pupils. We can’t keep the world in focus.
When color comes back to the world, leaving gets near. By the roadside, auburn and cream cows chew spangled green. Creeks steam. A lone bull’s horns gore
Finally, I consider whether I have been a terrible mother. A squirrel limps by, too wilted for chatter. I might just be. I would wake early, Saturdays,
Better than therapy is the spectacle of rejection in the deep. I am no longer Abandoned Wife. I am free citizen of Planet Spectacular whose mate followed a whim not based in my failing or his but in a primal scent. Never mind, husband. I am now in love with cuttlefish,
An mmhmm is softer, sweeter than yes— out of my mother’s mouth, a bright song—how beautiful, this flavor of English, best served over the phone, best from Mother, now
At eight years old, I dodged the sisters’ eyes: I ate my lunch, then donned a saintly face, walked out the gate, past church and up the rise toward Horn’s Variety, that mythic place. The path was new to me. I walked alone
Reader, they are dirty. You’ve come so far so harshly: bloody miles through silt and brambles, noxious bogs and mud-fields, dunes of char beneath the sun-spill—all of it in sandals. Take my chair; this dry, blond Scotch on ice
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