The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love as Invasive Species by Ellen Kombiyil

---

Side A

We who pretended to lie down at parties
with lovers on vinyl couches or wished

we didn’t but wouldn’t admit it, licked
salt from necks (bass leaping with our breath

(or was it expanding/escaping
inside us? (the black light’s purple stripes

transforming eyes/teeth into green glowing
beings, separate, alive, our faces

into negatives))) cried at dawn. If we
did it (we did it) because the Coke bottle

chose us when it spun. A boy jammed his tongue
into my mouth, which was my first kiss. We didn’t

ask questions. Or we fielded Ouija board
                guesses, Yes/No/Good-bye. I walked into that closet
willingly let them lock it. O our wasted

adolescence, assessing vertical stripes
on swimsuits as a function of decreased

belly fat, obsessed with how thighs pooled
when we sat, how absent thigh gap leads to ruin.

We dieted on Cheez Balls (one every 55
minutes, dissolved on the tongue to a well

of melted butter). Or we teased our hair
to make our faces slimmer. Ruin, from

the Latin ruere—“to fall”—as in headlong
or with a crash. We were always falling/

laughing/collapsing/unable to stand
our bodies pulsing with famine.

Side B
For the Lost Beloved

We chopped beets for the borscht
& all afternoon
sweet steam filled
the black & white kitchen.
Wine glasses full,
filling, up from the couch
down again, rotating
spots in socked
feet, radiators hissing.
Th e walk home I can’t
remember if I drove or
with sneaker prints in snow
drifts walked alone,

              but the torn-down marquee

flicked out, just like
the time a man
followed us (we crossed
the road & looked back
but he’d turned
into a dime, flattened
behind a lamp post).
We played Parcheesi
till dawn, yearning
for summer, for swimming
Lake Michigan (which yes,
you kept me to it) the two
of us dressed for a picnic.

               We leapt in

where waves broke
over limestone blocks
where tidal flow
crashed us toward
rocks, our bodies
alive with risk
with demand, we must
press on, swim, no
lady aboard a rowboat
counting strokes
no arms to lift us
dripping, out. There was
nothing erotic about it

              except the body’s own pleasure

& destruction.
This is what always
happens. I’ll stand
in a museum & my hand
is a talon sketched
by Michelangelo—yes,
it’s the way I clutch
my pen, the years
crossing & it
doesn’t make a difference.
You are the same
one I held hands with
at the double feature

                second-run—you must

understand—& when
we kiss we’re kissing
all the lovers we’ve
ever had, all
the future lovers.
You must remember
how water swallowed
our skin, how each
stroke flung droplets
hungry for the sun.
Like a scroll of instructions
delivered by manservants
bearing pomegranates

               (they’re detailed in the letter, the one
               with the talon sketch),
               palm-leaf fans in marbled halls depict flies/sweat,
               steadfast in what we no longer want.

---

Editor’s Note from Love as Invasive Species:

The book these poems appear in was originally imagined as, and is printed as, a têtebêche or “double book.” The poems in Side A and Side B mirror and respond to each other. Some companion poems share exact titles, while others share shadow titles, which appear in grayscale on the poem page.

---