Iterations, Or Milkweed Isn’t Poisonous for Butterflies
My boyfriend fell in love with a woman on a screen this afternoon.
I showed him my boobs. He fell back in love with me. The 25-year-old
version of him wants the other woman and whomever else wants him.
Desire fast and deep may also be called an ever-filling void. Years ago,
I jogged three times a week—miles—around a neighborhood
where I didn’t know anyone. Everyone I saw could disappear
the next day and I wouldn’t notice. Call me customer. Call me transient.
Every house I passed looked like anywhere I’d want to live. I wanted
and wanted: a house, a family, a house, a family,
a home. I jogged past an elementary school, clucked at the chickens
around the hutch that winter. Cold air in my lungs, sweat under my hat.
I jogged through the forest preserve. Then later, I traveled parks and ponds.
I drove South on the highway past murals. One said: THINGS TAKE A LONG TIME.
It was right. In the city I loved, a Biafran man hollered at me on the street, then followed me
into a middle eastern grocery. My parents grew hopeful. He said I probably wanted
to sell his story, asked to check my calves to prove I ran. That day I was waiting
to hear if I had breast cancer. I was waiting for a connection with myself
or someone else. I had half a hope to become 25 again, the version
who wore loud polyester and raced road bikes. What I found was milkweed
in a park with a friend, a poet that I love. He was mourning a cluster of his dead.
We walked along the river watching aphids eat. We kept our feet moving
as we aged. Its now, and the man who loves me, who I love has
fallen through a tunnel in time, fallen into a fantasy affair with a woman
on a screen. I fall in love with portals, too. Often. A woman in my memory
clothes me. I keep half a mind on her hands and the other on her lips.
And then I come home, come to. Come with me, says my love,
I found a ring for you; it’s got a shard of dark carbon
piercing its middle. Let’s let it be the first in a series of iterations.
***
Author photograph by Ashley Kaushinger
