by Kristy Bowen

 

 

In the bedroom, I am disappearing finger

by finger, limb by limb. Reinventing the mud daubers,

the blotted tissue, installing locks on all the medicine cabinets.  

All along I was waiting for the opening,

my head moon ridden and heavy lidded.  I opened my hands

and produced  a dove, but the love was all wrong.  The fog,

the heart-shaped wreath,  the fence I tore my thigh on were all in small villages

on the other side of the world where we never visit.  Where the river swarmed

and seized us.  I was uncurling, unfurling, following all the wrong signs.  

Older men walked me home and I fell against them like a cat.

In Paris, I released a fistful of petals out a hotel window.

In other neighborhoods, it was snowing in all the wrong ways.