backyard song

Since it’s just me here I’ve found the back and stayed there most of the time, in rain and snow and the no-moon nights, dodging the front I used to put up like a yard gussied and groomed, all edged and flower-lined, my bottled life. Uncorked, I had a thought: I want the want I dreamed of wanting once, a quarter cup of sneak-peek at what prowls in the back, at what sings in the wet rag space behind the garage, back where the rabbits nest, where I smell something soupish, sour and dank and it’s filled with weeds like rough cat tongues and the wind is unfostered, untended, now that it’s just me here and I am so hungry for the song that grows tall like a weed grows, and grows. When I was a little girl my ma said a woman gets tired and sick of the front yard, of kissing the backside of a rose.