(flesh, memory, unhinged in wood)

This is a body,
an empty parking space nothing shiny
ever filled,

a grassland with shadows whispering
along its paths,
a coded message too long to decipher
in a single lifetime.

My mouth remembers the trails along
each impermanent
bicep, but hunger is a waiting game,
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It wasn’t the first time. He’d known about the others but chose to climb the stairs, bring wine, and sometimes a record to play while they made love. He was partial to blues while she was more of a folkie, but the blues was good with sex. Fewer words. Maybe he heard the high and low notes of post-coital laughter sloshing with the bathwater, since the bathroom wall met the hallway wall, which is where he stood holding a bottle of single malt. Knocking anyway.
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More than four years into my grief over losing my husband, I unzip the ocean, part it like the Red Sea, not as Moses or any figure inhabiting supreme God-like capabilities, but as a woman unzipping the vagaries of her life. I unzip the water, but it doesn’t part away leaving me dry; rather, it rushes in furiously around my ankles. So I step into the flavor of it—salty, fishy, scented with dulse and sea palm. The water cascades all around then rises quickly up to my thighs, my waist, my neck. The icy cold triggers a sharp inhalation of breath … Read more