07.15
packed the car the night before
took everything that fit and
nothing more
it wasn’t an impulse
i’d been planning it for
a year
drove four hundred miles to my
sister’s and cried for
eight weeks
rented a single in berkeley in
a building once home to nuns and
cried for eight months
built in the 1930s with a drop-down
ironing board and murphy bed
a rose bush at the kitchen window
so beautiful it hurt
insomnia and two a.m. gazed up at
the full moon and knew i had exchanged
one bleeding wound for another
i met him in the laundry room
missing socks
then knocks on doors at night
candles absinthe pot and splendor
one night we did it in my long white dress
and red boots
and inside me he whispered
is this what you wanted
this
you mean
i thought
this moment or
this life or
this hell
i did not answer him but
yes
yes and
yes