in the last (possibly) last summerfor Margaret Atwood

1.
I want to love as if I were dying.
Even if you don't know, touch my shoulder
indiscriminately, like an accident
or a small error of space.
I want my heart clawing the air,
gouging into your neck, your
soft eyes, your anything,
devouring what it can.

2.
Broken into, dissected, flayed on a white platter
with blue flowers, the tomato is not greater or less than
the cucumber, the carrot, the yellow pepper.
At the first mile, I had to remind myself
I was not alone. By the last,
I had forgotten aloneness.

3.
A spider in the bed, a spider in the shower,
a fly preening itself on the bedside lamp.
A beetle doing a slow shuffle near the pillow.
They don't know from my morning rituals,
my nighttime reading, the mattress
where my body will slide into sleep. Still,
I want to get a Kleenex, initiate
disposal. But they can't help themselves,
and I know that if I wait a little,
they will move on, perhaps find a way
outside. In the meantime, the house alive
with legs, moving and resting and moving together.

managing the return

Of course, everything has become a little less lovely, the bananas
ripening too quickly on the kitchen counter,
the pile of mail precipitous and wasteful,
the deck paint cracked and peeling.

Climbing the stairs, it is evident
a molting has taken place here, too, but it isn’t the same
at all. Instead, a fault line, a recession, the body of the house
gone soft. The air needing windows and more light.

The first morning is a rude awakening, an insult
of disproportion. Someone is demanding a refund,
upset with their breakfast order, screaming
from their car.

It continues. Urine trickling from planters,
Trashcans pregnant but neglected. An arrogant blaze of neon.
The city is graceless, unforgiving, full of ways
to go completely wrong and pay for it.

Love, too, has headed a little south,
kindness, forgiveness, awareness, thanks –
it turns out these were rafts to hold onto in the flood,
but here the dirt is parched and wanting.

So here’s what’s left: the moon,
her bittersweet face gazing from above,
something in her eyes saying,
Yes, I know.