The sun was still rising.
He stood at the bottom
of the driveway,
a shovel in his hands.
His cheeks were ruddy, wind-chapped.

Inside, their baby lay swaddled
in her arms. His pudgy body
was wrapped in a cream onesie.

Legs tucked under her,
she rocked gently in the wooden rocking chair
set in the corner of the nursery.
There were crinkles around her eyes
as she unconsciously hummed
a tuneless sort of noise.

Heavy-lidded, his eyes closed under
her watchful gaze. His breathing deepened
in sleep, while hers deepened in relief.
She leaned her head back against the padded chair.

The sun peeked out behind the brick chimney
when he finally hung his shovel on the peg in the garage.
Stomping the snow off of his boots, he stepped into the warmth
of the kitchen. Leaving his boots on the mat, he paused, listening.

All was quiet.

His woolen socks on the hardwood were silent
as he walked down the hall to the nursery.
Standing in the doorway, he rested
his head on the wooded frame. The chair
was still, their heads tilted toward the other,
his wife and child asleep in the slanting light
spilling through the paned window.

Every year, a male wren builds ten nests.
On completion he finds a mate and brings her to each,
displaying her options.

She chooses her favorite and once she’s done so,
shreds the nest to
rebuild it from scratch.

As we house shop, I feel a faint
nostalgia towards
the wren nesting on the front porch
of the house you assured me I didn't like.

when the sun is sulking
she swells like the moon,
a sylph bright
              and naked
crescent ribs blossoming in the doorway

a bruise like a kiss
on the hollow of her
hip

footprints spot the lawn, there is
earth on her feet when she wriggles
across the quilt to where I lay
she traces the line

of my jawbone to the place
my ear nestles into my hair and she strokes
the crook of my ear lobe

there is brine between her
collar bones and I drink it in-
the salty-tang

when we lay afterward, repose,
we are splendorous in our sweaty, cavernous bodies.

she rises to rinse off. her legs, like a just born fawn’s,
tremble with a new found glory and her hips are
tender, her thighs bruised raw.

my residue shines on the expanse
between her ribs and hips
and I feel strangely attached to her
in that moment, but then she returns to bed

and it has passed.
I mourn for it,

that nameless moment.

Can there be anything more beautiful than the momentary
diversion of a streetlamp’s flicker? The way it brightens those naked
corners of the city, and the leaves and dirt that droop into them.

I wanted to write you a love letter, but you left before I remembered
your name, and my mother, when I was young
and she was scrubbing my face, told me never to forget
a lady’s name, but with your oversized flannel--
maybe you weren’t a lady, and maybe it wasn’t you I wanted to write.

The fireplace is full of ashes;
the flue is fastened shut.

You decided, when I asked, that you loved leaves in autumn best,
and I said they were my favorite too, but you were thinking of them
floating so gently down after you threw them high in the air
while I was thinking of the way they crumbled at the slightest touch.

It snowed last night. All of the streets
woke under a frozen blanket.

When I said I wanted to write you a love letter, I didn't really.

But you were here and now you’re gone,
and if I wrote to you and told you that I missed
the way you never shut the kitchen cupboards, or
the way you never made the bed or
the way you always remembered to kiss my cheek when you left
until you left for good;

if I were to write to you and tell you that--
it would feel like a love letter.

You brought me ice water.
It sweated on the bedside table
while I took your body into mine.
In your resonant chest there was a quality
akin to fear. Your heart
trembled.

Your fragile bones; I felt them
beneath your skin.

A light came
from your center when you were naked.
I touched your flesh, forgetting my own in
remembering yours.

My hands on your back,
you arched toward me,
your eyes closed.
You clung to me as though desperate
to feel my weight.

Afterward, the glass was empty.
You were spent and I was clothed
in the damp sheet.
A silence hung from the drapes.

These words are only
almost a whisper-

the moon is gently setting
away from you.
The room is losing moonlight;
your light is dulling.

I am forgetting your skin
in remembering mine.

The Serpent’s Meat
“…and dust shall be the serpent’s meat…”
Isaiah 65:25

An expanse broken only
by the small wooden house
with a chimney

and surrounded by
a reddish thick soupy dust
clogging the air and dampening
the senses:

seeping in the cracks in the wood on the walls,
flavoring our cereal in the morning and
musty kisses exchanged under a creaking ceiling fan at night.

Waking, we find a dusty film and salt flats
weighting our faces and bodies-
wherever the sticky-sweet was leftover

from the night before
when our bodies had arched; hip-bone mountain ranges
rising and falling while
the sun rose and set, scorching every minute
into nothing, and yet

there is something.

There is something
about the dust sparkling on the ends
of your eyelashes, the way it
mixes on my tongue
I spread your thighs,
and I come
away mud-faced,
and you come
away panting.

The dust, mixed with your wetness,
red like war paint-
evidence of my conquering
the landscape,

        which is your body.

The valley which rests between the hills
nestled against the expanse of the desert, all
leading to the muddy forest
which is buried between the crevices.

The salt of your earth,
I cannot escape it.

in bed at night,
the tenderness of your hands
harbors me-
I am still

I can’t see your face
but I know by touch how to
navigate your body

waves and swells, mole
in the half-moon lobe of your ear,
gentle caress
                           where sky and
               water converge

the concave dip next to your heart,
with the soft, fine, hairs I stroke
when I lay my head on your shoulder

you cup my *******
with a gentleness you keep
secreted away until there
is only moonlight

in that moonlight
I ache to melt
into nothing, but your hands
anchor me to the bed
so that I cannot drift
with the ebb and flow

of the winds pulling frantically
at the sails

I sail through the night,
following the stars in your eyes
sails pulled taut,
while your hands tug me,
this way and that.

Walking through the market,
fishtails hanging sluttishly over the edge,
scales glinting
the smell is vaguely familiar,
          I try to place it.

You wink across the crowd of people
as you weigh a bag of squid, your hands dripping dank water
and my cheeks redden--
I’m shy as the memories of my striped underwear on your stained carpet
and your mouth on my ******* rise unbidden.

You are nameless, but now at least,
I recognize the smell.

I wish I could describe to you the dense silence when the snow had melted,
and you had left.

It was almost as loud as when you were still
here, but in a way that sharpened
the cruelty behind it.

When I walk through the river of people in the city
and I reach for your hand,
and it isn’t there,
I wonder, abstractly,
if I will ever melt into the flow of people--

until my beating heart sounds no different
than those around me, and it stops squeezing
and stuttering, inconstancies
which serve only to remind me
of you.

I dreamt you visited me--
showed up on my doorstep,
hands in pockets

There were birds chirping
                       and the sky was mute

I showed you around and
didn’t hold your hand-

the bluffs,
the chapel,  the abandoned house,
       a heap of doors inside,
by the sagging staircase.

I woke up
before I could answer your question.

hand cupping my thigh
tongue against swollen lips as I kiss you,

your fingers thread through my hair,
tying us closer

an unlit candle on the
bedside table-the lamp
next to it, bulbous in shape, has no shade,
light from the bulb--
blinding until I focus my eyes over
your other shoulder

I still see him when we kiss-
when we touch, when you
tell those jokes,
unaware I like them because of the way his
mouth tilted upwards at the edges
when he told them

blankets a tangled mess,
bare legs swaddled in the sheets,
my ******* lay open,
exposed

you stroke a ******, the other; they rise to your touch

our bodies press, there is nothing
between us,
but there is no space to
breathe

after the heat began to swell,
we’d never leave our bed

open windows, curtains yawning-the incoming breeze rose
goose-pimples on polka-dotted freckles

lying shirtless next to me,
our contours matched but gaped wide
because of the heat,
faded jeans cuffed
just above his ankles

the blinds flutter-a momentary brightening
flitting over the sheets, rumpled, creased
and tangled around bare limbs

His breathing deepened, and I fought heavy eyelids,
but after watching ants weave drunkenly
up and down the windowsill,
my eyelids won and

I slept.