Eleven cups of water, and above it
her left hand heats up.
She forgets what it was boiling for,
but she cannot panic.

That's what frightened children do
when they spin too hard,
when they lose their milk.

She has a sexual existance now.
Stamped elbow to elbow
in a trail of candle wax and where she
tears at the meat on her own ribs.

.


Through the steam the creases
become readable, a life line
stretches a little further.

That's when he'd knead her palms
with bottlecaps, cut her in half to fit
with the red knees on his breath.
The sand in his eyes he didn't get
in December, not with any good girl.

He tasted like house whiskey
and a limber woman, always.
But she was seeing blackberries
untrampled on, a hidden campground,
caterpillars on their branches.
All lit up by a rising moon, all poison.

.

This arm now in sweat
is her dead end.
The wreck he once adored,
a scar he tried to ring out.

Her right hand he protected, and with it this night
she holds chopsticks, traces her lips, her teeth.
Lets them slip to the back of her throat.

If he could be there,
to pour the wine in and
let it drip down her chin
and splash on her toes
and all over.

To kick the broken glass under the counter.

.

03/16/2006

Posted on 03/16/2006
Copyright © 2024 Kimberly Rhode