CATE MARVIN
Kansas
A hair in the throat.
A lash in the eye.
What a washing down,
what a washing out.
The tree sticks in my throat
like a bone, the building sticks
to my eye like an icicle to tongue.
Your gate, iron-wrought.
The walk drags my feet along it.
Stairs trip me up them.
Red brick
bleeds on my hands, prints its touch
with rust. The knob bends my fingers
back. The door slams me in.
To return to, to return to
an air tinged with blizzard. A still
leaky tap clinking at a stack
of dirty dishes. The red rug laps me
at you, lolls me up your corridor.
My hands are raw from wind.
Your rings have sawed my fingers.
Strange, I always thought if we
were to again meet, it would be
in Paradise: shorn of skin, deboned,
rinsed from our bodies.
Our winter is done, the heart
gnawed to none, yet it seems I must
still watch you pick your teeth
with its bone. You might
have known I'd come home.
My throat full of burrs.
My eyes stuck with dust.
All the washing down.
All the washing out.