Mom said we’d have lunch
with her cousin Bobby,
driving in
from Jackson Hole, or maybe Reno,
places so far from Illinois,
I couldn’t imagine the route.

She picked me up from horse camp,
two months gone,
and said we’d stay at a motel,
cable, a pool, continental breakfast,
before shopping for school clothes.
I said OK.

Our yellow house waited
on its alley of ratty bushes.
Home had become
a question I didn’t answer.

I wanted Opal,
the sweet white mare,
and the girls from other towns
who smelled like hay
and never asked about the divorce.

Somewhere, Bobby was driving
across the country,
but all I wanted
was to go back
to the ranch.

After Dad died
Mom taught me her sauce-
olive oil, garlic,
whole tomatoes I crush
like hearts on her cutting board.

I remember his palette,
cinnabar and vermillion,
while she screamed over the stove
and he disappeared
into the attic light.

She was an artist once,
before I lived in her body,
before she hemmed my dresses
and cooked her life
into someone else’s evenings.

“It was always this simple?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“I used to do it the hard way.
Like Nonna.”
Her eyes don’t leave the simmering ***.

Love left alone will scorch,
turn bitter on the tongue
of whoever waits too long
for someone to taste it
before it burns.

At lunch I bought a pear,
its shape: a quiet joke.
I cut it clean and slowly,
the blade, the slice, the poke.

It tasted like a breather,
not sweet, just real and right.
Like silence in the stairwell
or breezes late at night.

The afternoon unknotted,
each task a gentler climb.
I fed the cat. I folded shirts.
You’re not here. I’m fine.

I burn my one effulgent hour
at a driveway banquet of unwanted goods,
listening to a woman in a Sag Harbor T-shirt
tell me her son’s wife hates her,
she never sees the grandkids,
and she’s moving to Costa Rica
because the dollar goes farther
and no one visits anyway.

Through my sunglass scrim
I watch komorebi flicker
across the varicose veins
of her blue-white calves
and wonder why I even stopped,
why I ask the price of a microwave
I don’t want.

Twenty, she says,
brand new, never used.
I hand her two crumpled dollars
for a box of yellowed greeting cards
with kittens and roses
and tell her my real name.

All the while
I feel the light through leaves,
the ache to bite your buttermilk neck,
to nip the chantarelles of your earlobes,
while the shadow falls,
reminding me I’d better love
whatever I am doing -
because it may be the last thing I ever do.

I’ve been through enough
to know silence can be louder than screams.
Enough to know
“I'm fine” usually means
I'm not.

I’ve had nights
where the weight got heavy,
but I held it anyway.
No applause.
No witness.
Just me
and the dark
playing tug-of-war with my peace.

But I never let go.
Even when I wanted to.

There’s a version of me
I used to mourn
the one before the heartbreak,
before the trust got shattered,
before I learned
people only love you
when it's easy.

Now I move slower,
but wiser.
I speak less,
but mean more.
I lost some friends,
but I found my spine.

The ink on my hand
ain’t decoration
it’s declaration.
Proof I’ve made it this far,
even if the road
was more cuts than comfort.

I don’t expect perfect anymore.
Just real.
Just effort.
Just peace that don’t ask me
to shrink to fit inside it.

I’m not healed,
but I’m healing.
Not fearless,
but brave.
Still got days
where I look in the mirror
and ask,
“Am I really built for this?”

And every time,
my reflection answers,
“You really are.”

Spindly fingers sporing,
Eyes boring,
Your voice dripped innuendo-
Nothing you liked more
Than a pretty *****
With a problem.

Your name a spell,
Mine a well—
Not whole but a hole,
Bottom dropped to hell.

You didn’t get what you wanted,
Only my death:
Gold threads strung me up,
Crown, cage, and child
All strands of the same
Choking mesh.

I wore it,
Strangled slow,
Dragged at last
To your
Rotting bed.