The Kitchen Diaries

(Inspired by the work of Kristy Bowen)

​​​​​​In this room the verbs slide under my 
tongue, warm and slippery as icing. 
My ache burns blacker the later 
it gets. Grows so dark you can’t even imagine 
what you knew of light. I wait for you 
softly among the bones, in the pale glow 
of riptides and sewing machines. Even 
the lightning scars across the sky like 
the fissures in my wrists. I sleep soundly 
in the lake when the dreams go bad, 
anything to block out the drowning, 
the faces in the trees. I dreamed the moon 
was a boat ferrying people to the edge 
of the river. How they walked like drones 
into the relative safety of my mouth. 
But the clocks moaned on poles stuck inside 
the earth and I screamed aloud with hunger. 
Before the altar of the stove I was dancing 
and demonized on the linoleum. 
Yearning for your reflection in the 
tea kettle, the champagne glasses, 
the horrible white of the toaster. 
Yearning for you behind me as I scoured 
all the pots. You know how to love me, 
bring me cake and leave me for days. 
Our bodies twined together making 
a terrible arch, a howling sort of church. 
Dish soap bloating my skin and making me 
smell of lemons, of dark wells 
and too much wanting. How it drips 
from me yet collects back into the 
cage of my heart to sing.
The lonesome structure of my legs opened wide.