Even this close we are constantly parting. Mornings you stir coffee, cream blooms in your cup like a white peony, while my hair washes up in the shower like seaweed on the shore of white tiles and tub rings. Our distance is marked by dirty socks, bread crumbs, shoes coming apart at the soles, underwear tangled fitfully in the drawers. Nights I sew your absence into patchworks to cover my nakedness. Or perhaps my nakedness is a cover which you use to hide your need to unveil yourself. I am a house in which the robbers have come leaving the furniture in disarray. A tattered kite in the wind, a ship that has lost its bearings. We are unfulfilled. Longing for some intimacy beyond proximity, we disrupt each other. Your movies blare into my poems, my forgetfulness that causes you pain. In the night, knees and elbows jostling, we lie like mismatched puzzle pieces, waiting for the clarity of morning to put us together, an unhinging to unlock the tenderness of routine.
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Readers’ Comments
- Laurel Wexman { I am re- reading this for the millionth time, through tears, once again. It is absolutely perfect! }
- Antonie Becker { Beautifully movingly written so, Thank God, the talent and ability is still somehow, miraculously, intact. }
- Jim Brennan { Garry, you mentioned this piece at the PVTU meeting - nicely written. It had me searching around, as things like this tend to do, for... }
- Dan Minnock { Hello All, Are you taking submissions for the June 2022 contest? }
- D. Oakleaf { Dear James, Thank you for sharing this outstanding essay. My father also built a "Z-Box" and I've recently taken up learning its backstory, even if... }
- F. J. Bergmann { We're near the end of 2021. When will the 2020 Fiction Contest results be announced? }
- Dawn Holmes { Blimey - what a read........we just celebrated a UK and anyone else who could make it - Cusichaca reunion at our home in Scotland -... }
- Literal Latte { Thanks, Richard, that is much appreciated! You stay safe, too! }
- Literal Latte { Hi James and Michelle (and other writers who have inquired) -- We're truly sorry about the delay. It looks like results for the fiction contest... }