The Laurel Review

1.

The part of me that isn’t sleeping gets up, goes outside, walks to the

neighbor’s trash pile, fishes out the white vinegar and the whole wheat

flour, walks back up the steps, puts everything

on the counter and slides back into bed with me. Heartbreak

is a multinational commodity. Maybe I’m unlucky

in love, or more likely, I’m a psycho-bitch with badass vocal chords and

excellent texting skills.

2.

We were married at sea. Underwater I licked his earlobes. He wiggled my

toes.

He couldn’t even bring himself to look at my

drawings. I kept dreaming

of someone who would fit me on some deeper spirit plane, someone with

the right acupuncture to get that precise spot—twenty years into it

he’d enter the room and I’d still

swoon. We ended up

washed-up anarchists chewing nasty microwave popcorn, scarfing water-

stained Lavyrle

Spencer novels on the beach, perpetually irritated

by the sounds of each other’s breath.

3.

So much in life is left

unfinished. The grown-ups

were heaving chairs, their legs stuck out at the top of the pile. The black sky

snapped

with ash and spark, stars beyond

the yellow smoke, the spired silhouettes of fir trees.

The biggest fire I’d ever seen. He must have been four, I would have been

six.

I don’t remember his face

but we must have danced around with all the other kids, our little bodies,

huckleberry stains around our lips, excited to be up

so late. You could spend

a century apologizing, crying blood, and still

not fix it.

4.

In the tent I was horny. The wasps began to buzz. I never respected his lack

of politics but

I loved him.

5. A novelist said Don't go into marriage thinking it's going to make you any

less lonely.

6.

A last glimpse of his ankle, pink and strong, rising out of the dark shoe

I’d given him.

He’d rushed up the stairs to find me. On the roof of his building I was

burning

with jealousy, having spied our old condom tin in a new spot. Maybe it’s

better

to be single. No one

to wrestle but myself, the responsibilities

of keeping this stick-poke-tattoo sell-out first world body alive.

I’ve had to do most of the healing on my own.

7.

Only in myth is there proper

redemption. I crawl back out of my sleeping self.

I go back to Baltimore and crawl into bed with him.

And on that last night, all night we hold each other, and when we shift, we

shift together.

Between us something like a baby had grown. Somewhere in the world

it’s still crawling.