"I Do Not Write About Drowning"
I'm not writing about your socks.
Either the pairs I pinched when I was out
of clean ones or the ones you took back
because I always bought men's socks.
I'm not writing about the small
of our East Village kitchen. Our coffee
tangoed, you poured, I reached
for the container of milk.
This is not about your snores
or our dog Sam's snores or Robert
the next door neighbor's snores,
when I'm kept sleepless
with the safe sounds of the living.
I'm not writing about Rum Babas
from Veniero’s when Rum Babas
were all you could afford
and you were the only birthday present
I wanted. Or the night I broke down in sleep
and you caught my tears like a cistern.
I'm not writing about your paintings,
or their rigidness when I said,
Use a roller. Use your hands. Get dirty!
My shadow stalks from a safe distance.
I hang around like a wooden hanger.
After a season of horizons waxed
deadpan gray, July sun fumes with hallelujahs,
jostles the dust on the windowpane, compels
the foreground to speak fluent Spanish.
I’m a private eye. I investigate the atlas
of your walks, probe your agate
for traces of voiceprints.
I write about celery and balk at the strings
that connect. How my liver prickled
(or was it my pancreas?) because sealed
with a kiss sounds like statistics.
You are target practice.
© 2008 Brenda Morisse
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