SHEETS OF POTATOES
It feels very far away. Purple linened box, boy, root vegetables
We were trying to dig up. I suppose it was. Far. Three blocks up.
But that winter
so many nights in an achy apartment, slicing sweet potatoes with soil still on, pouring oil and scratching pepper
and whole cloves of garlic, waiting for them to bubble and then to pick them from the pans,
carrying them to boy in bed. I wanted to love boy in bed. Loved him too much, I don’t know, didn’t know then either.
Yeah. always too much
never enough
thought never enough so shouldn’t I try, might as well try, no one else better
He often sang to me.
Picking piping potatoes from the pan, they sank
oil and then gas in the night, which bubbles
wakes you and tears into you. We never learned not to.
We woke to silent white, blankets of sleet making things quieter than before,
and wore many sweaters. The gas heat never seemed to work properly.
Shouldn’t we try together
Try to make meaning
I wonder how many nights he stayed in that achiness by the end, always six nights in a row
too many when sometimes we couldn’t stand it
When we were meeting, or in the cold outside my parents’ apartment, toothy
and then me going off to park the whiny Honda round the corner.
He ate all their hummus. My mother bought him so much hummus, wrapped it in bags
with his name. No one else’s.
The least romantic word for chickpea. Tahini, better if you say it slow.
that was the deal: you drive three hours in the rain, or six
I’ll parallel park once you get here.
The first person I fucked no longer feeling young.
His fingers
white and slender with scars, but I never asked from what. nights at the piano
in the beginning I was ashamed.
Or was that the first boy? the boy with the lacerated index finger
which made a crescent scar I loved
and traced and loved and traced
Four years, really, and now I don’t even remember him. He lives in Texas with a woman with jet black hair
and draws blueprints. He always knew he wanted to
draw and make, and draw and make.