February 2, 2014


You are not like other gods, are you, she says, looking at her reflection in the bathtub faucet. You do not require blood and sex sacrifices. I would like to dress in sackcloth and cut off all my hair and you are sending me fur coats in purple tissue paper. I am trying to ruin my reputation and you are clothing me in white even as I throw myself down the stairs naked with the milkman or paper boy or leather smith. This is not what I thought it would be, she says, smoothing the face mask down her neck. You are the kind of love that gets into every pore and even between the teeth. You are in the blue space between the fireflies outside my window when the air smelled like fairy dust  and rhododendron. My father always had epoxy on his hands. His cuticles were white with it, and when he had a beard it held the smell of his nicorette gum and coffee. There was a red flannel shirt I think, but even if I imagined it, there was an orange shirt and many thick construction pencils scattered. Tell my father I miss him and I'm trying to understand. And would you, would you tell him about the letter? Tell him I'm sorry I did not make the time. Tell him every metaphor I use to teach writing is about carpentry. Tell him how the shadows shook my bed last night, but how you were there, and how you would not let them take me. Tell him your arms held his arms when he held me. Tell him I meant what I said at the side of his hospital bed.