If You Come Over

It's still dark outside
and too cold
   to have coffee on the porch or take a walk
        around the lake, but if you come over,
I won’t do anything

out of the ordinary.
Really.
    I just want to show you
my new watercolors and latest oils:
    an overgrown dogwood
    weeping over the cedar fence,
leaking onto the sidewalk.
                  The white brick wall
                   ravished in Russian ivy
                  like hands on a throat.
The rippled lake washed in gold.

I have tried to tell a story.
To make a record of things.

    Nothing much has changed since you left here.
       I am either alone or disconcerted, though I am perfecting
my patience and composure.
I am perfecting catabolism.
How does anyone get this right?
Day after day.
A man on the street calls me sweet daisy.
A man in the bar hangs his gaze around my neck.
A man in my office
puts his hand on my thigh, 
                              so he can try to know me better.
I left early that day for a doctor's appointment.
What we already knew:
anemia and amenorrhea
and a heart murmur.
I had a lot to think about
on my way home; I hardly noticed
                                       the dog on the sidewalk
until he growled at me
long and low,
so I would know he was hungry.
                       Never mind.

                       But hey, come over.
The cold has already polished off October
and I miss you
ineffably.
I can hardly tell anymore
if I am sketching your face
  or just imagining you
     on the front of the cereal box.
This morning we could do something
                                         together.
We could reenact the scene
where we fried the eggs
and baked the sourdough from scratch.
Where we opened a book and flipped through the pages.
Where our legs touched and we did not move them.
                                       We could rewrite the scene
                  and let the toast turn black.
I could let you see the cities
glowing in the center of me.

It's impossible, you know,
to feel calm in a city.
            Without the sound of birdsong.
That why every love song
begins like that:
with a sweet piano,
so two restless people can pause
to kiss
                            in a doorframe.
Composed for just that moment.

      That isn’t what I wanted
                                with you.
I wanted to be the doorway,
        the trapdoor
that you would fall through.
The pair of hands
to unfurl you in the dark
                       like a moonflower.
To whisper inside of you
where it could echo
                     when I beg you
ruin me
ruin me
ruin me.