New love cuts fairy-lit lanes like a plow,

chuckles over clamor of cobbles’ rise
and topple. Who strings? Who is strung along

elated? Scored upon your lily brow

as you rearrange your bangs’ serration;

signal both conscious and subliminal

somehow. Your new man may be a keeper

but plucked humility rings criminal.

Bank reservations, signify in song

rhapsodic or deceive. It spills from eyes               

you're up to in bubbles bathing, deeper 

easing: another month or two presumed

until he’ll cut the strings, spring vacation

ill received. Look me up when you're exhumed.

Even under an inch of meltwater,

midwinter having called summer to mind,

a cleated bootprint persists in gray snow;

a declaration of cowed love once stuffed

in a mailbox... she was "flattered". So there.

I'd spilled like candies to the kitchen floor

and now I wonder what she did with it,

that letter. Years later, If I should find

that it's even at the very bottom 

of some desk drawer, scattered bodies might rest,

as a clutch of colored eggs, in a nest

of my family's dust and woven hair,

at last, under and warmed by the stove;

spring no longer mistaken for autumn. 

As an adult I see an empty room

   (Nothing a tied together room unties 

   like knowing that it might be otherwise...)

filled awkwardly with furniture and art,

   (The rug, it's not a native plant; couch’s                

   constancy’s outcropped elsewhere than this floor...)

as a child I couldn't see the parts

   (We move out, in; arrangements need debouch

   estranged; new geometry account for...)

that made the room as distinct from the sum. 

   (Surveys, nightly, remind of awkward fits, 

   disputes lost, price tags I cannot unsee;

   unsettled sit, contingency besets 
   me as unease did princess over pea.)

Brunch: Happy forty-whatever. Cross-eyed

love in sudden context; feeling lifting,

fleeting, out from the deepest latency.

“I’m happy to let the oven order,”

I croaked, drunk on sparkling water, fresh juice,

coffee. The waitress made for the kitchen

while, sunken in my seat, I was excused.

Short years lingered, many menus passed

in choosing: my beautiful blond baby,

cooing hostage of limp intention till

someone kicks my foot beneath the table.

I woke choking on firm maybe; waiting 

on impasse in an hourglass, weighing

the bun in the oven aforementioned.

Subway sevens pile up like cracked shoes,

skirt platforms. Eyeballing perilous hems

over paperback walling, our hero’s

pageant confidence leavens. Part of him’s

grateful: upskirt instants, beauties who tread

lead roles on the steps. Part’s opposed: conquest-

daydreams turn, sour esteem; but the ding

that emits, pealing of pole and gold ring,

beautiful it’s. It’s contact, truly wed,

and still he’s touched by dull knee and stray breast

at once… Duly dutiful, cooly true,

he wonders aloud, “Who is the villain?

Me? The women? Or the barreling train?”

In any case, he’s his wife to rescue.