In the market fingering a box of tea I heard you laugh

two aisles over. My hand froze on the plastic; there was a

woman’s voice, laughing with you. I pressed against the

metal shelf, coat buttons tapping the cereal boxes below.

Who knew me here, I wondered, was I still a stranger, a

woman shivering against the Liptons? On the edge of the

wood it was especially dangerous: the one road with its strip

of shops, the bar, the dance hall, the gas station, the Feed

and Seed. Humans. I closed my eyes and heard your heavy

stride. The breeze your body makes so close to mine. You

didn’t slow. I had eight dollars in change and a hole in my

jeans and a fraction of a lover and I felt it, my poverty, how

little I knew, the limits

FREEDOM

FREEDOM

Fourth of July barbecue balancing a plate of cake on my

knees my mother said Remember that time you went to live

in that old cabin? Laughing in fresh disbelief I never did

understand why you did that. The mosquitoes whined in my

ear, chewed their way through my ankles. I looked at a girl in

the next yard holding a sparkler against the sky; the smell of

gunpowder, the lethal taste of vodka lemonade. I didn’t say

a thing. Don’t you? my mother said. Remember? How weird

you were on the phone and then coming back to gain all

that weight? The cake slid off the plate, and the dogs lapped

it up. I was walking to the back door. How cold the empty

kitchen was. I was actively not remembering. There were no

parades, in the woods. No firecrackers no dogs no mothers

no refrigerator hum no beers on ice just my hair gathered

in his hands and my back bent in the firelight that was the

time he got in up to the wrist and I stopped breathing. A

stranger in the woods whistling The Star-Spangled Banner

as he passed the window we were both amazed there was

not a single drop of blood when it was over but you’re in the

kitchen you had too much to drink you were there and now

you’re here deep breath see? There’s your husband now,

asking you if there’s an extra jar of hot sauce somewhere

he can’t find it. You can find it, go outside with him, put the

jar on the grill, the sun slapping your face afresh, that girl

still wasting sparklers before it’s even dark the green light

spitting off into nothing and look, your mother has another

piece of cake, and a fork, and you’ll eat a bite of it, just a bite,

and you’ll say how good it is, because it is good, you made it

yourself.

HOOD

HOOD

You glued together a broken dish. I sat sewing a hole

on your cuff. The rain