I have hung up my cloak 
of matter. I am alone on the bus,
my lean and gamy days
forecast by the twist of a trumpet. 
Stop. Moon river. Jazz trio. 
Again, I am naming what I see
to no purpose. Tears stand militant 
on my cheek, my hands make an empty
noise. The horn is raised to his lips. Oh yes, 
I regret my frequent cruelty.
I am stamping, crying, calling out. Hard-driven 
and steaming in the dark. 
Forgive me! I am crying at the cafe 
closest to my lover's house. 
Forgive me! My melodrama, my artless desire
and simple crimes. Forgive me!
I’m here, waiting round the bend, I’m crossing you
in style, I’m on my feet, furious,
shouting  encore

In the beginning, everything means everything:
the latticed pie that leaked in the oven 
and his manner of greeting. What words chosen 
for not now, but soon. An entire future based on a plate of sardines, 
the moon over Battery Park, rhubarb out of season. 
The hoping more than the thing attached.
In the beginning, we believe we have made a new language. 
When I tell him I have been rearranged, internally, 
like a rubix cube twisted into planes of pure color, 
that I’ve finally unpuzzled my life, he asks for the check. 
Hand on my waist, he guides me home, says, 
speaking of rearranging your insides.
I rotate, blushing, to unsolve myself. 
It doesn’t matter that he has missed the point—
I believe one thing can live inside the other.

‍

I left the antique mall with a porcelain nun, a small container hidden in the base of her habit. Her eyes were downturned in prayer. I told the merry, ancient ladies who manned the display cases how I planned to use her, a stack of foil-wrapped condoms hidden in her skirts; they laughed their merry, ancient laughs and I felt very blessed. I bought coffee and a drift of powdered creamer for a quarter. As I recall, the condoms expired as I had no use for them. For years, I felt as empty and brittle as a basket. Of course she met some mishap, the secret compartment broke, leaving her black pleated robe glossy and hollow. I felt I had disappointed the shop ladies. I had nothing to confess. My bedclothes stank only of my sweat. Because I had once carried a child, I also felt god had played a rude joke. No more, no more of that, he whistled.

I took a screenshot of you with the foil and the lighter,
cross-legged in bed with the fire yellowing your chin. 
I was five deep, making martinis with the brine 
from a jar of pickled beans. I couldn’t stop hiccuping.
Your face, so changed, the forehead tattoo 
I argued against, tilted towards the screen.

               Easy to dismiss as passing, these in-between years.
                          A layby on a hard road.

Since the call, I’ve been waiting for news. One of us dead 
after all these years. The foil black from burning. 
The bottle, empty. A wicker chair mounted on the wall, 
philodendron curling to the floor. Hey Shannon, 
hold on. Yeah, I’m still here.

Fear too, nipping at the heel. Fear bruising my arms with fingertips of smallness. Pressing down, glancing back. The receding figure of delight. Something I’ve coined anxious immobilization to pathologize freezing of the bones, clicking of the joints. A bad back. A case of hyper-kyphosis my PT called incipient widow’s hump. I thought that unkind. Depression, (Freud called it anger turned inward). So, anger then. Mounds of it. An artillery of anger aimed at young people, at old people, people who have too many children, who chew audibly, who stroll, who clip coupons or ask polite, probing questions. Seasonal depression (that’s just science) except I like winter when there could be wolves anywhere, when you can howl and howl and no one hears. Fatigue—how the days revolt! Think of the Sahara. I’ve never been, but my sister went on retreat in Morocco. Clay tagines, dune-surfing, endless loop of shopping malls. In Marrakech they said she was a real Berber woman, her long blonde hair snaking in the eager sun. Of course she rode a camel.

First, I noticed her pantyhose,
which no one wears anymore, 
except figure skaters and the very old.

Otherwise, she was ordinary. 
Blonde, legs slightly bowed, 
dressed for a night out. Pretty. 
Enough to make my throat itch.

As we lurched ahead––a train 
on the opposite track flying past,
a stereoscopic missile I could feel in my bones––
she approached a man.

“I’m really horny” she said. 
Quiet, but loud enough.

“What?” the man said. 

The train stumbled into a station.
“This is a good stop to get off
on,” she said.

“What?” the man said. 

After the doors whipped shut,
the men around us, in dark suits 
and dusty coveralls, clapped the man on his back, 
laughing that locker room laugh 
no one ever grows out of.

I wanted to be in on the joke,
the back-slapping, to be immune.

Then I remembered 
my life. 

Light drowns the buffet, butter sculptures softening 
in the barbed winter sun. 
Before you arrive, I’m nauseous, 
I hug the waiter, I choose a slice of plum cake and drag my tongue 
through its meringue cumulus. How obscene
then, my joy, as you make your way 
through the stiff white linens, thumb the sugar 
from my lips, lift an eyelash from my nose. 
I dance a little around the pastry tower; 
the shrouded tables flare and dissolve.
I meant to throw my mind forward. To anticipate 
the end that keeps coming.
Instead, I read the scene like a lover, 
a passenger on a long journey, half-asleep 
in a dimly lit tunnel, and, like a child, 
I held my breath.