You always start your stories with the weather,
So I’ll start with the weather:
It’s spring, insect-ridden,
Like a bad broth,
And what’s supposed to be savory is
Sweet-tasting, overripe.
I’m on the train saying your name to myself, and
Resenting the way it sounds:
Mex-i-co, fort-i-tude, blue-ber-ry.
“Too much fucking salt,” you said, and I wished my
Arm had bruised at just that.
Now I’m hopping into pools of light on the
Midnight sidewalk, counting my fingers, noticing
My shoes falling off of my feet,
Thinking words like cowboy, and bluestockings, and noire.
I’m finding my own fantasies so boring these days.
Marrying you, for example.
“You’re not the one I’m worried about,”
Dad says, and I feel like I’ve pulled off a heist,
Like my hems are lined with stolen diamonds.
Still, he tells me,
“Come home soon.” Come back to Pacific waters and
Golden rod and avocados hanging heavy as stones;
Come back to the mustard plant and the cracked Bauerware,
To the blood libel, to the glib inanity of our conversation,
Come back to the relentless idiocy of our love.”
I’ve made a family for myself of stones and flowers.
You are my flower, they are my stones.
California dries beneath my feet; the colors bleach.
The dogs depress me because they don’t understand me,
My eczema returns, I lose weight, I gain it back, I stay pale.
We talk on the phone and you say, “come home.”
To the jarring deli lights, to the soft, stinking waters,
To the electric fear, the autumnal incandescence, to the moonlit
Bike rides and cocaine, to the silhouetted water towers,
come back to the secret banality of our love.
2011
2011
