Nobody's Baby

Chrisoula suggests a new title for the twenty sentences, "It's All About Me." Everybody laughs, it's okay, I'm not the joke, I'm the reason we can laugh together, i.e., it really is all about me. Sidling in bed later, touching each other in darkness, full and hot like summer. Imagine being nobody's baby, imagine not being seen the way she sees me. Seeks me? Well, saves me anyway. Falling asleep with the taste of her in my mouth. 

Earlier, Northampton is full of light - half-hearted holiday decorations - as if the collective were finally coming to terms with its gross failure to love. Two hundred bucks cash, when I was a kid it would've felt unbelievable. Willow trees in late November remind me of poets who want to be loved more than they want to write good poems, i.e., I'm finally okay with mirrors. Clearing the attic, re-roofing both porches, scrubbing last season's Mason jars. What happens when we realize we are doing this to ourself?

Anonymous monk graves dusted with snow, half a mile from the shrine, a clearing in the woods, the only reason I visit. I became lost to myself in your glances, which would have been healing if it hadn't been so much of what you wanted. Sail on deep river, all the way to the sea. 

Laying down with her means our shared cry for love quietens, and the silence glows like a furnace. In the Country of Turtles, in this fine house that marriage built, neither sacrifice nor loss obtain. Fear, at last, owns no dominion.