The Kitchen Diaries

 
In this room the verbs slide under my
tongue, warm and slippery as icing.
My ache burns blacker the later
it gets. Grows so dark you can’t even imagine
what you knew of light. I wait for you
softly among the bones, in the pale glow
of riptides and sewing machines. Even
the lightning scars across the sky like
the fissures in my wrists. I sleep soundly
in the lake when the dreams go bad,
anything to block out the drowning,
the faces in the trees. I dreamed the moon
was a boat ferrying people to the edge
of the river. How they walked like drones
into the relative safety of my mouth.
But the clocks moaned on poles stuck inside
the earth and I screamed aloud with hunger.
Before the altar of the stove I was dancing
and demonized on the linoleum.
Yearning for your reflection in the
tea kettle, the champagne glasses,
the horrible white of the toaster.
Yearning for you behind me as I scoured
all the pots. You know how to love me,
bring me cake and leave me for days.
Our bodies twined together making
a terrible arch, a howling sort of church.
Dish soap bloating my skin and making me
smell of lemons, of dark wells
and too much wanting. How it drips
from me yet collects back into the
cage of my heart to sing.
I am always one step ahead of the dark.
The lonesome structure of my legs opened wide.