[Sometimes I’ll make a new friend and they may ask about my history]
Sometimes I’ll make a new friend and they may ask about my history
and I might say this or that and they might catch on that I was unhappy
and I might confirm and they might ask, but why for so long?
And that really is the million dollar question. Or if I’m being cute,
the $30,000 a year question (aspirational). Really, it was a question of
$9.50 an hour. It was debt at age eighteen. It was a double-wide mortgage.
It was jobs like overnight stocker and cashier at the local grocer.
It was tax return relief living. It was cigarettes over electric bills.
It was one of us. It was both of us. It was one couldn’t drive
and one couldn’t budget. It was freelance writing and willingness
to labor. It was maybe military or maybe nursing. It was neither.
It was depression. It was usually I lost my job. It was anxious fury.
It was no big deal. But mostly it was an abundance of youth
and we didn’t know what else to do with it, but waste.
* * * * *
Canada Trip
for Izzy
Our letters had refracted each other,
reflected familiar, and hinted
at alternative versions of ourselves.
When I arrived, she did
what the best version of myself
might do: Gave up her bed, fed
me what she grew, didn’t untack
life from her apartment walls.
I had told her about the man
who preferred my kisses stolen
in crowds and entryways.
About her beloved, she was shy.
Her partner lived with his family
six streets down, walked over
after work, when his sister or mother
needed his car. When they didn’t
he took us out for coffee, curry.
When I admired her ring, asked
about the wedding, they blushed
in unison, their affection sheltered.
When they bickered, he too tired
to drive, she too tired to navigate,
it was tender in the tension
held between their hands.
And though I looked for a bruise forming
under his thumb, or a river in her
water line, I could find no agony
building and bound for the surface.
Of all the relationships I have scrutinized
theirs was the first I prayed for.
On the last day of my trip
she shared what we called lore
about her life before him
and how unlike, but not so unlike,
it was compared to mine. How
she herself had once slipped
under the depths of another
and how she herself
had slid out from under.
Before we said goodbye
she opened every window
and poured through me, sunlight
through a quartz chime.
Over all the mirrors I saw
an attainable color.