Lost Dialogue (Davina)

Soil: Where have you been?
Fingers: Have we been here before?
Soil: What do you say?
Fingers: No.
Feet: But we have.
Soil: And where have you been?
Feet: Cracking on concrete, thinking of you.
         Shrouded in shoes, thinking of you.
Rocks: And us?
Seedlings: And us?
Fingers: Somehow—
Soil: Say what you mean.
Fingers: Somehow, although we don’t remember—
Soil: Yes, I think you understand.
Fingers: —we know you.
Rocks: Then turn us.
Seedlings: Then settle us.
Fingers: No, not yet!
Soil: Where have you been?
Feet: Dancing in driveways, thinking of you.
         Bundled in blankets, thinking of you.
Soil: Where have you gone?
Fingers: We were afraid. We hid.
Soil: Then come back again.
Fingers: We will.
Soil: You will.

Clover (Davina)

Here’s how
the story begins:

we were supposed
to write but
went foraging—

an odd task
in a city
park, which yet

yielded yellow
crabapples &
young clover

where we sat
with bumblebees,
the white

blossoms warm
& peppery.

The city’s September
heartbeat: footsteps
& freight trains,

one basketball on
hardcourt;

the city’s
bloodstream:
murmuring
Schuylkill,

almost
too slow
to hear.

Soon we sat
silently like
old friends, strangers

bound by
this strange
small meal,

by little
white flowers
woven together—

so maybe it
doesn’t matter
how the story
ends.

Yard Time (Meghan)

These sidewalks hum with distrust.

I long to run my hands along the chipping stone

of this old bridge and wonder how many cars have

rumbled over its pavement,

rushing to all the urgent somewheres

before time stood at attention.

I fantasize:

This cracking skin tracing the lines

of masons long dead, their sweat and ignorance

etched into cobbled texture.

When their grandmothers died

they didn’t know why.

I am lucky to breathe this moving air.

I am lucky to return to stillness,

even though its air is stagnant,

a stifling electricity.

I will stand guard and keep these idle

hands for another day.

Duplex (Davina)

Boys & girls still daydreaming romance
always believe they’ll drown in loneliness.

        As if believing we’ll drown loneliness,
        we keep talking to the wrong people.

I look for my people in wrong places
on my phone. Am I even talking?

        On my phone, am I even a person?
        Tell my friends to slow down a little.

Tell my heart to slow down a little,
caught up in the frenzy of joy & terror—

        don’t catch me up to that terrible frenzy.
        Just give me love in a build-your-own kit.

You give me love in pieces. We build our own
boys & girls, still daydreaming romance.

Aphorisms for a New Season (Davina)

The magic of holding a baby
is that the baby is so small.

Each of us speeding through the night
has a stretch of the highway we call home.

To leave friends with a full heart
is both tragedy and privilege.

The secret to a good marriage
is good teeth, I mean love.

Winter rain and fading youth
both know how to fall slowly.

The daily act of flossing may be all
that preserves a person’s life.

The secret to leaving without breaking
is to leave a piece of yourself behind.

Winter rain cannot stop a night driver
who knows the road with his eyes closed.

The magic of love is that something so big
starts out as something so small.

Vows (Meghan)

Vows

I thought I knew what I wanted to say about the day

I say “I do” to you, and I sat there smugly on a bar stool

while patrons chattered around us and you asked what

our vows should be: declaration, proclamation, or promise?

I said pledge and planned to pledge my life to yours,

to commit to being your ballast and beam in exchange for the same.

I said it had to be clear that this was for year after year after year,

that I would be here, and you could rest in knowing that

my love is all-weather and all-terrain, and again I hoped

to hear you say something like the same.

But you said, “I think there should always be a degree of uncertainty.”

That’s right--you said I should never feel safe and never rest because

on any given day, I might come home and find you gone, and there will

be no explanation, and if there is, it needn’t be good, because this is a

game of pleaser and pleased, and when the pleaser falters, all bets

are off, which is why we shouldn’t place bets in the first place.

Never gamble what you feel you can’t afford to lose.

You said you love me, for now--that’s obvious--but life is long,

and someday we may look back and see this as nothing more

than a placeholder.  I saw you looking at my arms like taut strings,

wound to receive you but snappable with ease for a strong man.

Ok, you didn’t say much of that really.  You said,

“I think there should always be a degree of uncertainty,”

and my eyes went blurry until you muttered, “Listen,”

and spoke fresh words to replace the ones I’d dreamed into

existence in the panic of a promise assumed, undone.

You really spoke of couples who are complacent,

passing ships in swollen bodies who forget even the nicety

of a kiss hello.  You said you never wanted to stop being better

for me.  Better. for. me. Words I could hear but barely believe.

And to pledge your life to me would mean that the promise,

not the living marriage, meant the most, and a promise

without action is just a faded dream of syllables

uttered under a tree when everything was hopeful.

You said you never want to be the man who sits on a bar stool,

like this one, carousing with his friends over the stupid things

wives do, the stupid things I might do, like a superior sultan

enduring the marathon of marriage to a bawling ball and chain.

Well then, I thought to ask, what do you want to be?

“I want to be that scrawny old man with white hair and wrinkled face,

brushing the white hair away from your wrinkled face,

having shared three lives: yours, mine, and ours,

because we never forgot to listen and respond.”

“I think there should always be a degree of uncertainty.”

I think you should say it differently, but together we will find

the combination.  We’ll refine this condemnation of promises

and pledges into words which only will approximate

this act of love, this active love, we mean to water and feed.

I saw you looking at my arms like velvet cloth,

supremely soft but sewn with iron thread.

Outline (Meghan)

Outline

We’d been kissing in the churchyard, on the bridge,

but our shadows on the park grass just after twilight--

yours a little taller but broader, mine morphing with the movement of my hair,

arms falling in natural extension to resolve in the hand of the other—

gave minds time to photograph the moment so I could write it later

to remind you how you looked to me in silhouette,

the painting of your solid hand immaterial on the lawn, projected

 by lamplight (or tell me, was there a moon?).

I was afraid of you, of course; we looked too well-matched in grass

to falter, but your touch was of a handsome stranger

etching the night into memory in case all failures were former—

in case night stretched into night stretched into night.

I moved away to see the shapes change,

You pulled me close to see them meld.

I don’t remember shadows after that—

Just you whispering in me (or in my ear—do you remember?)

the soft  laughter of nearby terrace diners, perhaps gathering to the spectacle

of alchemy that will be love.