Verses From the Middle of the Bed

I think of her at night.

The feel of my head against her collarbone, on a train gunning through asparagus fields. They call it spargel in Germany. She laughs at the word, head tilted way back.

She moves in after a week. Come home one day and dry my face on yellow towels. I hate yellow. But I dream of her in yellow. Her on the Fourth of July gnawing cobbed corn like a typewriter.

We buy papers and she quits after the third try. “You’re better at it anyways,” she says. Empties a cigarette, pokes down with a mutilated bobby pin. “You give up too easy,” I say.

Seven nights in a rented room, two pass. A map gets us lost on a street I can’t pronounce and I yell at her. Want to put my fist through a wall so she dares me.

We fuck sideways. On the golf course, once. In the back of my car on a dirt road. Wake to the smell of eucalyptus, of stale wine. Her delicate fingers raking over my chest.

I decide to leave and ask her to come. Boxes line the apartment and we go. A house in deep woods, an A-frame with a sloping roof.

One October, I bring home a six-week-old kitten with paws the size of cotton balls. She names it.

She comes in drunk one night. Says her little sister died. Makeup stains my shirt leaving big black streaks. I pour some water, put her to sleep. Auburn hair on my pillow makes patterns like an etch a sketch.

I picture that dune. The beach is alive that day. Alive in blue, grey, steel. Mound of sand, faces pointed west, we talk. Her words darken the sky. Foam billows from deep parts of the sea. She leaves first; I stay.

Watch the tide roll away from us.