At My Own Door

I’ve got beehives in my bones and he can hear them while we sleep. When he touches me, my skin if hot on the surface. There is a fever, a sickness, and we don’t know what it is. It’s hottest in Idaho just before the sun goes down.

We talk about what might happen next like it’s a card game we play, and I am still tired from the motels and the empty diners and watching you ride your bike. I’m not even home yet. And I don’t even know what that means.

I once wrote, I wonder what I will look like in Idaho. And now, I wonder what will look like when I go home. And who I might be in that kitchen and what I might cut and how late I might wake and what books I might read. And I write to someone I admire and I tell her, time is a liquid substance. It feels more true today than ever before.

There are cracks in the ceilings and cracks in our language and cracks in our plan but we move forward anyway. Everything is like everything else until it isn’t.

At a market I haven’t yet been to I will pick out tomatillos with my fingertips and I will think about the barrels of them near your house and I will start the game all over again. A friend tells me, it’s nice that you carry so much guilt. I don’t know how to do this any differently.

I am curious about things like how far the horses ride and how much we can carry. I read about things like the near extinction of buffalo and I collect quarters in my pocket. I ask strangers about their opinion on moving quickly and what they wish they could live through again.

If we call it, we would know more acutely that we are just going to get old and I am going to wonder what I did with my body all these years and why I spent so much of my time worrying about it. I think at the end of the day I’m going to have to forgive myself and show up at my own door. I just don’t know how to do that yet.