greenstorm | Lovely

For My Lover, Returning to His Wife

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.

She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.

Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.

She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,

has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,

done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.

She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.

I give you back your heart.
I give you permission—

for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound—
for the burying of her small red wound alive—

for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call—

the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.

She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.

As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

-Anne Sexton

I really like that one. In other news, Juggler and I were sitting in a restaurant last night when the plate glass window shatters! People start screaming. Some dudes are lurking outside. Eventually the police are called, names and numbers taken, and the girl crying and holding her head is told to sit down. This is my second brush with almost-kinda violence this summer, and still as close as I've ever got to the real thing. All you folks who were beaten up regularly in school? I never even *saw* that happening. So, this may be some sort of a change in trend, but it's still pretty minor.

Other hand: my birthday was pretty wonderful. I worked, which seems to surprise people, but I made a ton of money doing it, enjoyed myself, and instead of doing the celebratory beating we'd planned I got that to anticipate and instead spent some time with Juggler exploring my b-day present ( http://www.tickledpinktoys.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=223 SO COOL ) and generally hanging out in lots of nice ways. Then we went out for dinner, see above, and rented one of those childhoos movies to settle in and relax after the somewhat disturbing incident. As a result I've had no sleep.

It's neat how things, for me, have been turned inside out as to how I process things I've anticipated that have been cancelled. Instead of thinking, 'aww, that sucks, I would have loved to do that' I find myself going, 'mmmmm, I get to do that next time, yay!'. So, I'm looking forward to hanging out with Tillie, and to doing that thing we were gonna do sometime when no one's working.

Today: possible farmer's market & Tillie & Devon meetup, possible goldfish shopping (I inherited Tillie's, and he's really active and lively and friendly, and I think I wanna get him a friend and do this right, the 'web says goldfish have mnore personality than most fish and they're so right), possible plant shopping for Juggler's office, chicken dinner with Chris, and possibly hanging out with someone after that (anyone not going to Sin and wanna just chill?)

Love y'all.