she handed him the carving knife
thinking it was a coaster
now there’s a ring stain on the Eames
and blood in the bed

I do it from my car in the driveway 
because I have no home of my own.
My husband stands in the picture glass window, 
leaning in to decipher 
the muted words my lips make 
through the windshield. 

When I come inside, I am shaking cold 
from sitting in a parked car in Utah 
in the winter 
and from wringing myself out to a stranger 
by phone. 

I will never be warm again. 

“Did you talk about me?” He asks. 
“Did she tell you to divorce me?" He asks. 

My mouth is blue my skin pricked, 
rigors and lock jaw. 

And so it goes every Thursday at noon. 
Him waiting at the window for me to turn the engine and leave. 
Me coming back inside.

you drew my face in lumber crayon
on 10 point caliper paper
every year for 30 years

on summer evenings
we’d walk to the Princeton track and fields 
to sketch the lacrosse team warming up

for something to do

you drew serious and fast
never looking at the page
thighs and skirts a squiggle of face

explosive and static

at night you worked the sketches
in inks and gesso on the 3rd floor
by lamplight 

to Maria Callas

I fell asleep under the drafting table
in your cardigan and socks

An old hippie guides a fragile kite into the air. It is cut by hand and twined around a wooden spool. The string holds back the paper heart from being loosed into the sky. A tender blue tail of the thinnest crepe, sprinting in its wake. The man dances it in swift circles above my head. I watch it swoon and dive in the bleached sky, deciphering meaning from chaos until water leaks from my eyes. 

Up the shore, my children swim. 
They fall, scream, right themselves, fall again. 

The tiny valentine writhes above my head, alive and taught against its line. 
 My open heart— a gaping panfish flummoxed by the bob and weave— reaches for his paper one.

the ghost has gone
silent as it came

more silent even

and who am i
without anything
to haunt my dreams

the whole of my life
a pocket of loose change
spilled out onto the bed
when you sat down

the window that has been my window 
for five years       frames 
wine dark pavement and a listing 
power line  
 
in this moment with this mind    
and water hazing the pane     
I see it as if for the first time
more beautiful than anything

i think about you when i’m warming the car
at 5am on dark winter mornings
the green glow of the digital clock mounted on the dash
searing into my eyes like the sights
of some predatory animal

i want to tell you about things i haven’t thought
of in years       like standard transmissions
and american spirit cigarettes and porch wine

and when i’m washing dishes in the sink
the window a black mirror
reflecting the dark grooves of my night face
back into the kitchen, i think of you again

i want to tell you about swimming in quarries
at night      jumping from the precipice above
and plunging deep into its reservoir
finding the surface by the buoyancy
of my body alone

when I’m laying with my children
in darkened bedrooms breathing quiet
and waiting for them to turn their tired bodies
towards sleep          i want to tell you
about the soft bed of my childhood
the popping embers and smoldering sage
my hair combed one thousand and one times
the musty books scheherazade aesop’s fables
the Iliad

i want to pad barefoot in my flannel nightgown
to your warm bed    pull the plug of moss

from your ear and whisper everything
never knowing if you were awake
or what you heard