Three Poems
Pizza Bread
And after all these years
Am I your sadness
And you mine?
Living ghosts
Making tea, the grassy aroma
Faint, like when you made green tea
For me the first time
In my cracked concrete studio apartment
That never warmed up, where spiders
Lurked behind the toilet.
Move out, move in with me
You urged. And I did,
Leaving behind improvised bookshelves
Made from the discarded bleacher seats
Gathered from my high school I hated so much.
But before I moved
You gave me a vegetarian cookbook.
I was completely inept at cooking anything not in a can or
With the word "minute" in its title.
But for you I'd try anything.
I bought some nice bread, fancy to my untrained eyes,
Cut it it lengthwise and made a pizza-type sauce I spread across its dimpled surface
Before baking it in the crappy oven I wasn't entirely sure would work.
You came over as I was finishing.
I didn't hear you enter the apartment over the violent,
Frenzied blasting of ...And Justice for All.
You tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped.
You laughed, I felt sheepish but laughed too.
When I served you the amateur pizza bread, you
Accepted graciously and ate all of it.
I felt so loved in that moment.
I didn't realize that the lid had been
Removed so that the sadness could start gathering.
Even had I known
I would have happily stumbled forward just as I did,
Grateful.
Flossing
The thing about getting up at 4:30 a.m.
Is you're tired by 8:30 p.m.
No one actually understands that
Though they think they do.
They pat you on the head, kindly, condescendingly,
Thinking about their nighttime adventures
That lie ahead,
Their meditations and introspections,
While you stand in the bathroom and
Floss your teeth,
Wincing at how sensitive your gums
Have become,
Tasting a bit of coppery blood.
Reach
I'm reaching for your leg, getting
Only a tangle of sheets
Clumped in my hand.
And it's probably been at least a month
Since I washed these sheets.
I used to be on top of these chores
And the fact that I no longer am
Makes me I realize I should not be reaching for your leg.
I should just let you sleep.
You don't get enough sleep.
And even though each breath means
You and I are closer to dying
Waking you now
Will not stave off the inevitable.