Spanish poetry whispers itself weakly from your lips
And I am digging a needle through your Mexican skin
Wondering if it would be alright to kiss you
Or to try and pronounce the words in your pile of foreign books
And I’d like to sew you something with my hands
Rather than a sharp and steady machine.
The circle on your arm is a memory from me
And a dog barks outside your door.
I fear you are mine.
During the first week, I open boxes
and sit on the floor of a cold and lonely room
where people before me have placed their beds
and made their love, fallen asleep with music on.
I have probably made you cry but right now
it’s not on my mind. I have probably made you
do things you never would have wanted to do
if it weren’t for me.
During the second week, I take a walk
because my voice is gone and my feet
need some work to do.
You peel the bed clothes from your mattress,
peel pillowcases from your grandmother’s stained feather downs,
and sleep on the plastic dust shield put in place ages ago
by your drunken mother.
Your sister drops an eating dish,
a dish that hits the floor and explodes
in a mosaic of clear and blue-stained glass
and you laugh because you live far away
with a man who could care less
about your unhealthy habits.
At first, I sneer at your pink lace shirt
that you loosely hide beneath the denim
of a dirty pair of overalls, the type of overalls I wore
when I was a child…
outside growing beneath the peach trees,
growing tall until I could reach an unripe peach,
growing tall until I could climb the trees
and get my own overalls dirty.
My grandmother hands me shovels, still,
and asks me to dig up the rotting bulbs
but I always use my hands because I want to feel the dirt clog my fingernails.
I want to feel it in my mouth, later, scratching at my pink throat.
Now, I stare at your socks,
your ripped tights,
the earrings you wear,
and I think we are friends.
Your personality is in a puddle on the floor of my back deck,
soaking through the wooden boards
and seeping into the nests of stray cats,
raccoons buried under pine needle blankets.
Leather shoes that you bought in Japan
when you were in love with a woman I have never met,
a woman with jagged bands and an Asian name
and a tea set filled with your sweat, blood, and tears.
You ask me to put flowers on your grave
but I will go before you.
You and I pick delicately through a heap
with nimble fingertips, fingertips that have been pricked
and cut open to check your sugar levels
and they say you have been eating too many cough drops.
I smile, watching you bend closer,
watching you strain old eyes and crane
an old neck.
You are the most loved woman in my life
and I have watched you pop a man’s pimples
at the kitchen table.
I have watched you peel potatoes
at the kitchen table.
I have watched you take your medication
at the kitchen table but now, you don’t even have
a kitchen table to sit at.
I visit, peanut butter sticking bread together
like bricks and cement, a sinkful of butter knives.
I never wash the dishes when I’m with you.
