by Sara Fitzpatrick Comito
Not for Long
False uprights of slatted fence,
turgid stems of green water –
membranes and buttresses desperate
tries against some distant fall.
We had set protocols of bras then
when the nurse checked for scoliosis.
Did she dream all night of ridged girls,
a Braille of straight up and down,
and how did she end up here, anyway?
I think of those strobe vision drives through
Georgia, the east trees conspiring with
sunrise, the light syncing with my pulse.
Your REM twitch. The RPMs of everything.
Fast had to be the new up, the
brace of life before it got away from us,
Long never lasts. Straight, neither,
all false ballet like racks of history.
Overdone
The crack of felled things
upends my silent return.
I spent the morning
in a morose river walk
performing the usual postmortem,
putting pins into last night.
You were a felled thing, too,
and I was as ever bereaved.
But now you’ve got the tea on
and there’s toast,
which has been overdone,
like always.
I pause, smelling the thing both
welcoming and sad,
before making the antique knob
disappear in my hand.
I can hear the shook-shook
of your attempt to undo
your mistake with a butter knife.
The curtains are too yellow,
your smile too bright,
the creak of the boards
too quaint for either of us.
And you’re wearing a new apron.
Sara Fitzpatrick Comito is a Florida transplant by way of Massachusetts and, briefly, Idaho. Her poetry has appeared in places such as Thrush Poetry Journal, nthposition, THIS Literary Magazine and Short, Fast, and Deadly. She edits the online journal Orion headless and blogs at http://saracomito.wordpress.com
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