Flies in the afternoon. As it starts to grow warm. The whirring and clicking that comes from the grasses. The polluted flower of your womb. How it swells and calls to me. Time becomes a thin crust of salt you will live on top of for years. We look forward to shopping on the weekends. Snappy little interludes that leave our fingers sticky. We go about our business. It speaks for itself. It speaks for all of us. My guts keep slithering out of my bellybutton when I sleep. I wake up in tangles with a craving for milk. Milk makes me sick and now I don’t sleep. Instead I stay up making plans. If they have any chance of success I tear them up and start over again. Why waste your time if you know what the outcome will be? Why play if you know you’re going to win? A cold snap drifts in from Alaska and now the tree frogs are silent in the gray evenings. I leave a candle lit on the front porch. You can blow it out when you come home. I’ll be upstairs digging a well in the night sky. Not because we’re thirsty. Because someday we’ll need a child. The record is skipping on the solo. Rain drifts in from the patio. Every possibility is also the lack of possibility. Isn’t that beautiful?

 

 

Portland Review 56/1