Tacey M. Atsitty

ix There I was, all spread out for the taking, bloomed wings waiting for winter sleet. It was a long season of drinking whole creeks and nothing else. We churned desert into desert. What I’m saying is, neither the desert rat nor damselfly can bear the nosebleeds: shoal- laced face bearing down just in time to overwinter. There I was, all spread out for the taking. In truth, nobody wants water this thin. One swallow, and we’re off to dig for more within a hollow womb. This morning we sip water, discussing the trauma in our blood: saltwater — there it rests, in droplets, on my breast skin, “Oh,” I say. “My tears,” rubbing them deep within. xi At church I sat salvaged: I said to send me away wearing nothing but satin and lace. We both felt secondhand. It was knee- length, and it wore me cheap. I couldn’t embrace the old woman who once wore it, couldn’t see my wrists even. And my neck, it was braced up all in lace. The woman next to me says, “How beautiful.” I say, “This beautiful,” then split a hair down the middle. I lied, “I made it myself,” then stood up to fade through painstaking humiliation. As a child, a girl, I saw through myself to age 45. It was then when I first noticed the aching of my hands, how they were soon to set themselves away — they came and went, as if they were lace for the breaking. xiii I was reciting Alfred, Lord Tennyson on my back, in a canoe, floating the holiest way I knew — so close to ghost, and went pale for a moment before finding myself wandering among high pines. I didn’t expect to emerge in white already with my heart in his hand, just as normal as a shell rests on my chest. Didn’t expect to hand it over so early on, at the boundary of our properties in a dream: in the grasses where he ended and I began.I’m feeling very still now that we’ve crossed over into the pale, where we are soon to thread, soon to embellish, then loop back into each other: braided the way we were taught to approach each other — the same way.

Just when he thought to loom the backyard for bud & Just when he came to admire, or thought to dote over Already he rues stick-thin arms, whose petals brave the late Whose middles freeze; we’ve gone without All ramose till now, empty skirts anxious to round back for It’s the fourth year lips have gone without any such Already hips full of leaves and none Else, years by last, the lone — it splat behind My back, it came to ache as the rake clawed at We’ve gone into partial burn, without even No matter for bloom, the seasons no longer allow The trouble with doting over blossoms is In a swollen tub of ruth, wanting nothing but his

How can we die when we're already prone to leaving the table mid-meal like Ancient Ones gone to breathe elsewhere. Salt sits still, but pepper's gone rolled off in a rush. We've practiced dying for a long time: when we skip dance or town, when we chew. We've rounded out like dining room walls in a canyon, eaten through by wind—Sorry we rushed off; the food wasn't ours. Sorry the grease sits white on our plates, and the jam that didn't set— use it as syrup to cover every theory of us.