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Asteroidea

You’re mine, she says, stringy arms
trapping my head to her chest.

Mine, with the certainty only a child
can summon, body stretched

over sand-colored sheets like a starfish.
When her father says No, she belongs

to herself, she strikes with sudden
strength, limbs curled and clinging,

and it’s then that I recognize her
claim: the one that, each morning,

I don’t let myself make. Prying
her arms away gently, I steady

her water-blue eyes with mine,
see the depths of us surface,

know it’s true when I say
yes and yes.

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After Quarantine, We Go Out into Marigold Light

in search of zinnias, faded to pink,
the last bouquet of emerald peppers.

Summer squash rotted and frozen,
pale skin crusted with ice. You say:

Let’s see what we see, leading me
on thin paths crowded by dried dill,

your wonder gracing everything––
especially the pumpkins that will

never grow, green as summer,
palm-sized and already dying.

Your cough is muffled by the open
world. I can smell the air again.

I try to exhale the fears that have
flourished alongside you since

before you touched the earth.
I say it like a prayer that won’t

sink in, like frost on the surface
of things: One breath, another.

These fruits don’t need to be harvested.

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Another Ocean

As the waves recede,
you hold on to my knee,
strands of seaweed

hugging your heel,
your hair full of wind,
sand shimmering on skin.

Then you flee from me,
chasing gulls and other things
that elude my grasp.

You are water, wild
as weather––you have become
another ocean.

Soon you will sleep
in my arms under a thin towel
and seem small again.

Awash in relief, I will
watch the water turn from
aqua to navy to grey.

I will watch as a seal,
dark and elegant,
skirts the shore

with an eye toward us,
then wish you awake again
to see it.

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Ultrasound

I was seven when the sea turned
on me, tossed me sideways, stole

          my footing, sloshed me to shore
          like a weed. I stood in saltwater,

sandy hair stuck to my shoulders,
stunned. When I saw the pearly spine

          in the ocean of my body, heard
          the static flutter, it was like that:

a grief unleashed. I said her name,
and the waves overtook me.

          What could I do but surrender
          to their swell? I shed years

of longing like an old skin,
stood reborn, then waded in.

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Progesterone in Oil

This one must go into muscle.
Sometimes it brings forth blood
without warning. Propped

to one side, I press my eyes tight
as he draws viscous liquid
from a tiny vial, hands

reluctant yet steady. Afterwards,
I switch from ice to heat. Feel
the oil spread like an inner

burning. Count a heartbeat
faint as breath in my back.

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Saturdays

Sometimes we made pickles. Packed them tight,
poured brine, hot and salty—the kitchen soft with steam.

We cut each new batch by hand, knife sliced toward
the body, a clean half-cautious swipe. My husband

was quicker and crueler in all his calculations—
the edge of that blade like syllables severing soul-flesh leaving

tiny tugs of unseen grief. Ghosts are visible
on very rare occasions; the first time he waved the weapon

my direction, we were slicing pickles. He was careful
to keep the handle steady—quarter the fruit with its seeds.

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The Chickens

In the yard, the chickens peck mindlessly at broken shells
thrown out the back door
forgetting that these once held their own
unfertilized seed.

I watch them nibble at the calcite
and think about my womb—how hollow it feels—as a hen
rejects her tiniest offspring.

If God is Mother gathering her chicks beneath her wings,
why does the hen deny this little one refuge?

Everything in creation is soft and violent:

this morning, after sunrise, harvested eggs dashed to pieces
against my kitchen countertop
because my children are hungry.

With pangs I remember that I too must eat.

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Divorce

My husband had honey-colored eyes and honey-colored hair
and he broke his teeth into the flesh of a strawberry
as though it were something to jump rope with, never a bleed
of juice left on his lips.

His shoulders were shrined in cotton year-round,
taut to the bone with summer rituals of baling hay, and in winter
the rigor of shovels or pulling our children in sleds.

He could bounce a smile off an egg freshly dropped
from our chickens in the barn behind the house where he spent hours
adapting the rhythm of a pitchfork to his tenor—

its strong, sonorous vibrato rising over the grunts of his horses,
all of which he nuzzled daily, kissed, and called by name,

commanding them to lift their legs, inspecting their hooves,
digging mud and rock out of their shoes; and they did with ease,
because they knew he loved them.

He would, with equal care, tighten the lids on every jar of jam
we canned together with berries we had picked together,
cleaned, then cooked. And after a long day of barn work and jars
cooling on towels in the kitchen, he’d wash the sweat off of his body
in the shower, careful to turn on the overhead fan to keep
the bathroom from filling with steam.

That night, I would lie next to him in bed and, with my eyes,
rove the stubble on his jaw, under his chin, down the steeple
of his neck, answer the shallow of his breath with my questions.

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On Needing Someone to Be a Little Like God

My son falls into the arms
of an overstuffed chair
and imitates his father
watching TV,
remote in hand, seduced
until he hears
the knob turn
on the trailer’s backdoor
and lurches forward,
out of the chair,
bounding toward
the groan and clack
of hinges and feet,
trembling with facts
learned from cartoons
and fingers flavored
with crackers and cheese,
charging into
his father’s open arms,
half a reflection of me
standing in the kitchen
with paring knife in hand,
seduced—
needing someone to be
a little like God
feeding, clothing, listening
as we try to understand
his absence from our day.

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What’s Left

Imagine I am petting the soft head of a white peony,
full bloom, first cutting—holding it

in the hollowed-out crook of my arm, like an unbroken
egg, afraid of its yolk—the small chance

that it might leak inside the membrane,
and as soon as I open the shell, its once whole soul

will spill out onto the floor. And I,
in my hurried foolishness, quickly cleaning the mess,

rinsing it into a garbage disposal
until its last string of yellow goo is sucked

through the drain’s black rubber teeth,
as I stand over it in horror, shell fragments littering

the countertop like torn petals, all that is left of you—
a sick reminder of me—

while the room grows wild with arms waiting to touch you,
and I want them to touch you,

take you far away from my negligence. It happens
so fast: the hospital gown, the heaving, all your shattered

pieces scattered in my lap, the bed begetting ghosts.
My hands screaming for what’s left.

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