She Is Only a Body

She Is Only a Body

In windows there are faces, silhouettes
of eyes that have just stopped crying
or are about to cry or do not cry
because someone or no one will see.
There are stories in the freckles
on their lips. There are stories in their hands.
But mostly you can see the crux of things
in the way they cast their eyes down
and think.

(She sits at the bar and watches him
walk in. Says Hi can I buy you a drink,
he says Yes. Later they fuck in the bathroom.
In the cab on the way home she slips a ring
back onto her slender finger. She remembers the last time
her husband knelt before her and removed her panties
with his teeth. She remembers it was a year ago
and then she thinks of her wedding day
and how she once dreamed of drinking wine
with him on a porch in New Orleans,
the eaves painted robin’s egg blue.

A woman in her bathroom, two fingers
in her throat. Hot liquid hits cold porcelain.
She breathes easier. She cooks dinner,
slices stems from pink hydrangeas.
Her children are shrieking in the backyard.
She presses her palms to her ears.
She isn’t the woman she wanted to be.
In the mirror she sees frosting
on her shirt and licks it off.

A girl with her friends, her first time
at a lesbian bar. She meets a woman,
they go to dinner. They go to dinner again.
They see each other eleven of the next
fifteen days. The woman is married
or the woman is getting a divorce—
the girl is still a mistress.
But if she falls in love...
Isn’t this how affairs go?

She feels it on the subway when her head
bobs and her bag slides on her lap.
She feels it when she is only a body
at a table in Starbucks, head turned
into a book, hand wrapped around a cup
of tea. She feels it when she catches herself
dreaming of summer and tan feet.)

Meanwhile I snap green beans in a white kitchen.