Sam Moe
THE SOFTER THE ORANGE, THE TASTIER THE GOLD
There is a horse running across the field. I take off my glasses and its form becomes a storm cloud. I wake up; you might not love me, but we head down to the kitchen together, your pajamas snagging on old stairs, my hand steading myself as I pretend to be another person. At breakfast we control the pull and rush of others, though I can’t see your face behind a stack of toast I know we’ll snap together, fast magnets, back again but we don’t really care about details, back again but why do we always do this, back in those days I turned my imagination into something you could shatter, I let your words open blooms on my skin, I was a scab, I lost my nerve and my scarf and my scars in the squishy sun patches of October. You’d laugh if you knew how much I was sleeping. A riotous joy in your half-asleep eyes, I’m trying not to try, I’m trying to fold my body into the snack cupboard, I’d rather be a chain link on a cat collar, I’d rather tell lies, did you forget about the fires and the forests, the gristmill and the gods and the ground beef cold between our fingers, a sala full of home cooks, a Saturday entrusted with meaning, but what about the way the crows roped across the sky, but what about the sob caught in my throat, but what about your arms—there’s a reason I don’t go home anymore. There’s a lot you don’t know about the inside of my skull, worn away like crabs or time, saltwater hands, bone turns to shell, purple then thin in the sun, a part of me is always intentionally disconnected, a plug yanked out of the wall, this isn’t about feelings, nor is it about panic, I have no more heat to share. Mid-day. We warm our hands by the wood stove, we talk about frittatas and blue ducks, geese with their honey spots, a quail the size and gumption of a heart. Someone brings glowing caviar, someone scrambles meat in a pan, someone asks what I’m doing these days, what’s going on with that old writing thing, yes I remember something like that, the direction of the pen in my hand, but already the conversation is glossy glaze-haze then ham, someone asks for the jelly, then killing me with the anterior exam, the tendon twist, screw the ulna, what would I even know about the fade out, I could be a poltergeist walking and you’d never notice, not when food jumped through me clear, not when I couldn’t stay in the tub, not later, not sooner, not ever, not anyone but you.