While I was waiting for you

My tongue shattered my mind sank my breath floundered the days lengthened my hips lamented the dog napped impatiently and my breasts calcified, turning to stone.

My fingers dropped things: glass, wood, sand slipped through their cracks and holes. My dreams dripped with vegetation and tigers stalked them at night, yet I would awaken dull and cardboard-boxed.

And all the while you swam in my sea your flickers of movement – mysterious, lunar, primeval – drenched with meaning, an impending cataclysm of joy? Of salty fear or drowning grief but certainly a great wave of change approaching.

And I wished I could write you the most precious poem a mother could write her son about blue stars and how my loves were like butterflies and something about the depth of existence

But my body proved only a body my breath ached my mind, damp and slow, my tongue shattered.

Painting by Mary Cassatt