Months after ending
my engagement, I woke
with my ears plugged up,
stoppered like a bath, chain
dangling a rusty tongue.
Television static filmed
my cochlea like milk
I can’t drink. I couldn’t even
hear the massive truck wrestling
by outside, splintered logs stacked
atop each other like all
my lovers. I was pressed cider,
leaking mash. I gulped,
I yawned false at first, then
grew very, very tired. My jaw
unlocked nothing, hinged
disappointment each
time. I shook my ears side
to side, imagined warm wax
pouring out like the maple syrup
he used to drown waffles in, puffed
squares resembling the indecipherable
garden boxes he built me. When I left,
he demanded I pull my starts out.
Those are most certainly yours.
It was horrible to yank them up,
roots kicking like something caught
in my throat. Worms encircled
my wrist like a prom date I never
had. You dodged a bullet, everyone says,
and I hear you lodged a bull – horns
tearing up our walls, snout slapping
the bed with sentient fury. I lived there.
I lived in what I thought was love,
lumbered. It’s cottonwood season,
our neighbor said to me, snow in June!
Isn’t it something? She touched my arm
like a piece of mail she’d been expecting.
I couldn’t tell if she knew I was leaving.
It was relentless. The cottonwood tails
hailing all over the house, feverish
fluff. Like some invisible beast
gutted a thousand rabbits all at once.
