Context (Meghan)

Context

I said person but meant man.

You heard boy in the space between.

I am a woman person.

I want you to see a woman person.

You are a man, fully grown.

You are a man who wants me to see a man, fully grown.

So I said person and you heard boy

because the girls before dressed up, paraded,

sighed girl, girl, girl, and boy, boy, boy,

and lover made them giggle,

husband made them dream of days but not beyond,

amoureux was foreplay because it sounded nice.

Partner was a word left over from the second wave,

its sack of spider eggs returned

to hatch on someone else’s skin.

Maybe mine.

I said person, then significant.

You said I am no trial.

No trial size, sweet teeth satisfied?

No trial for lies, our precursors’ crimes?

No trial period, conditional use,

but Darling, we’re all on probation.

(Happy transmitted better,

unruly reverberation supported

by the blood in your warm hands.)

I said person, diluted.

I meant woman and man, full strength.

These definitions fail but not completely.

Here are my arms, my eyes,

Trust, which sounds like rust, and might have been

had we stopped building shelters

and slept in the rain.

I see you are a man, fully grown.

I am a woman, undiluted.

Leaf, Leaf, Leave (Meghan)

Leaf, Leaf, Leave

One time I saw a leaf

in ombre green to red,

severed too soon from the

still-living—still staining, still clinging

in late September to summer’s

strong branches, bracing for the fall.

One time I saw a leaf

of smooth white paper

abandoned on the concrete drive

(beneath a tree, reddening for Fall),

flying off sheet by sheet

like doves from a branch’s sacrifice

in full, arresting flight.

One time I saw you leaf

through piles of sorted mail,

envelopes recording bills

already paid.  You were searching

for love letters you might have dreamed

but wanted to be real:

a leaf from autumn pressed

between pages never read.

One time I saw you leave

but knew you would return.

I’d pressed leaves from the day

we made our promises, after all.

One time I saw you leave

but couldn’t watch you go.

You stood in the space between us

like a late September leaf

while I lay on the concrete,

a rotting arm, a paper bird,

wiser from the Fall.

Drafting (Meghan)

Drafting

There’s the thin quilt and the comforter folded at the end of the bed,

this t-shirt that barely strikes these sharp hip bones, too threadbare now

to wear in pictures from the days before: this pink cotton, this white neck.

Your hands are no longer new, but they don’t remember yet.

My hands are no longer new, but they have not yet grown bold.

(I say that, but they know your skin.  And once they reached beyond

and came back holding me, a tiny, beating facsimile, but she looked

familiar all the same.  I asked, and you repeated my name,

the syllables like syrup on your tongue and I could taste the sweetness.)

I wrap you in the me that breathes, stitch you there with elastic floss,

toss you like a boomerang toward tomorrow’s homing bend.

This pillowcase smells like pheromones, like words we only speak in the dark,

like decaying night into early morning still wearing evening’s dress.

You cover me, and I feel your figure swimming into cavities uncharted,

these atria, these ventricles, these arteries and veins without a name.

This could be cartography.  Folded parchment.  Landmarks etched in ink.

Wednesday Morning, Impromptu (Meghan)

Wednesday Morning, Impromptu

You and I, a lingerer’s goodbye.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the sun rise.

I drove alone from your town to mine

on the crowded highway’s massive bridge

over civilization still sleeping below.

Pink eased around smeary clouds just then

growing golden above the tree line, and

I thanked you silently (or probably I gasped).

I meant to tell you what my father always said:

Red sky at night, sailors delight.

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

In your arms again, I forgot to say,

but I know you’d remember there was no storm,

the sky was wrong and the memory beautiful.

Miscellaneous Notes from Unwritten Chapters (Davina)

It's a little past sunset, and
you and I are chilling on your front porch,
though our grandkids say that "chilling"
isn't a thing you do anymore.
The railing flakes with rust under 
weathered green paint,
and we've decided to ignore common
sense for a while and go barefoot.
My feet, brown from your unswept porch
and all dusty in the wrinkles, are cold 
because they're not used to socklessness and
the early autumn wind anymore;
your feet are warm because your fat, fluffy 
cat is lying on them.
Inside, your daughter and my son
(whom we betrothed at birth) 
are putting their youngest child to bed,
while their teenage twins play the Xbox 360
in your living room and giggle
at old technology.
"Do you remember," you say, 
"when we first wrote poems together?"
We laugh because we can't,
and because we've never stopped, and
because growing older is definitely
something to laugh about,
as long as we're doing it together.

We haven't yet 
looked Death in the face, 
but when we do, we'll laugh again
because it's just another chasm
that our Father's built the bridge across,
and on the other side
there are probably plenty of cats
and another creaky porch railing 
for us to put our heels up on,
as we talk about the way life's rhythms
turn out a lot like poetry,
and we'll age, like wine or cheese or
maybe ageless people,
into a glorious eternity.