Self-Portrait as Housewife

Your dreams hold your days together.
xxxxx You spend your time transforming stars into

kitchen implements that you could bake potatoes in.
xxxxx Or coming up with one good reason for crying

over dirty socks or falling asleep each night with all
xxxxx the lights on in the house. Waking, you can’t help

remembering the first, but not the only, time
xxxxx you took off all your clothes and stood there

like a pile of unopened letters. And then
xxxxx the kissing would begin; tongues rummaging like hands

through someone else’s desk drawer,
xxxxx decoding his system for living. Remembering

those few extra minutes you stayed in the shower––
xxxxx because you wanted to. Because it meant something to you.

A woman is wading through the dark rooms
xxxxx of her house, each one stagnant and swarming

with loneliness. She wants to say I, but can only say You.
xxxxx And a man hates his son’s crooked teeth so much

it hurts: they ring like a fire alarm. Pieces of a shattered
xxxxx mirror keep falling in her eyes, she can’t help it.

Come now, the dishes never put themselves away.
xxxxx Reapply your eyeliner, pick a fight with a saleslady.

Living is forgetting, blue wings beating against the window,
xxxxx portraits through the centuries with every feature

exaggerated. I cry out to the trucks heading South, the shifting clouds,
xxxxx anything that moves: I know what it’s like, take me with you.