Last night I had a conversation in my head with a friend.
I told him, if the person you’ll grow old with
needs too much care she better let you loose
because you seem like the caring type.
In another timeline, it will be me taking care of another man,
a tall man, a restless man.
When he’s finally in one place alone I
will touch his face and it will feel like praying.
I know now, looking at other people’s intimacy is like looking
at a tiny tiny glass that goes in and out the cupboard
and the hand that holds shakes the stem.
I want to look and look away, the way
he antsied around her because her heels were so high
in the snow, in the seven steps from his car
to my door
and on my narrow dirty stairs I want to apologize
to her absence of numbers, his impossible height,
for that sometimes
I think of them in bed.
But I become
a winter doll
who pours wine and lights candles,
who with whatever function left
pulls reasonable things from her chord, spills nothing,
knocks nothing down.
..
My grandmother’s boyfriend passed away
a little over a year after her. A strong,
vital man, who did all his exercises diligently
like my friend.
He heard that when she said
you can leave me now
it was her language for winter,
for the holes in her hand.
