from Suite for Michelle

I. Roots

 

When my husband left I lost thirty pounds.

I pulled all the vegetables out of my garden

and chucked them in a trashbag, tied it shut

and left it in the garage.

After three weeks it popped,

 

and the whole house stunk with rot.

My shower turned black.

All the mice were suffocated.

My children got special notes 

allowing them to sleep in the school 

cafeteria, instead of in their beds.

I slept in the garden, sticking fingers

down the carrot-holes, scratching

at tree roots and giving them names;

they grew into me, punctured my skin

like steak knives through wax paper; they 

built a lattice over my skeleton. 

And wood is very heavy, see, it’s full of water,

 

so now I've gained all the weight right back.

I’ve gained the garden, and the rot,

and the kids curled up under lunch trays,

and an inside coated in oak bark.

I've gained the strong black armor of these seasons, 

 

but I have not lost any weight,

or any other thing  

a girl might like to lose.

 

II. Lighthouse

 

You are not an American.

You died a long long time ago

on a warship, sunk by the enemy,

after a piece of wood shrapnel tore into your kidney.

You walked two-hundred miles from your landlocked village

to a city on the coast, inspired to enlist

by a traveling messenger; on the way

you left a trail of sweat across Eurasia,

arrived at the gates half-delirious from exhaustion,

gleaming and tough like a desert pearl.

 

Because you loved that country. It beat your heart

like a tambourine, rattled your breast with drums;

it fathered your children, even the ones

its fires swallowed. It planted fruits

for you, it sang. Your country woke up the sun

in the morning and rinsed the moon's toothbrush before bed.

Now it has claimed your body; now the ocean will marry you,

build a city on the coast of your insides

and grind you into salt.

 

The Atlantic air currents can carry sand thousands of miles.

Sometimes I stand on lighthouses,

hoping to taste you on the wind.