Zoë Fay-Stindt
TO CURE MY LONELY
I wear double linen to bed,
stretch my yellow-socked feet
out the window to feel the bats
brush up against the house and get
some good peripheral loving.
I’m glad for the rain, for the nicotine,
even the clogging shower. I’m glad
for myself. Once, a man at a stoplight
pinched his nipples at me, smiling
until the light turned. I’m far from him
now, remembering that the loneliness
at least, is safe, and stuffed
with its own good love and anyway
the ravine full of oaks down the road
is getting greener by the day.
I wonder if I’ll spend all my life
figuring out what to do with color,
how to love it well enough. How
to hold its wonder in this gruesomely
anchored, claustrophobic body.
Last winter, your brother crawled under
the table to assign king cake slices,
and I won the small fève: a pale
ceramic moon. Your mother lit candles
to pull the muck from your ears.
Now I spend dusks grounding
myself, feet dug into cool earth:
trunk to spine, fingers smoothing
wheat tufts. Careful, the thistle.
Careful, spider tickle. Beware,
mountain edge. I watch the irises
work through their lifespans,
unassuming, purple more staggering
than any man-lipped confession.
From my coin purse, my small moon
counts the unbuttoned days with me.