In a Diner at Great Sand Dunes Oasis, Colorado • Case Study
The chalk taste of prescription pill
washed down
with too-sweet lemonade. I only take it
because you do, and I wonder
if you get high so you can tolerate me.
Through the window,
hummingbirds murmur
around bird feeders. The first time
I ever saw a hummingbird I was on your lap
in your parent’s backyard, your arms
wrapped around me while you packed
a bowl on my left thigh. I loved
how the bird pulsed through sunlight,
how its wings moved
so rapidly I could not see them,
an opal, darting on air
like a searching tongue.
Your voice
could be all syrup and big teeth.
You told me hummingbirds
are the only birds
that stand still in mid-air
or fly backwards. Now, with two fingers,
I pick up a pen and doodle Oasis
in black ballpoint onto your arm.
You are uncertain.
The curtains on the diner window
are checkerboard yellow. Like large bugs
hummingbirds continue to swarm.
When the waitress arrives
with our dinner, we are silent
and dry-mouthed. I watch
as you slice chicken into pieces
and with each shriek of your knife
against ceramic plate I feel
the same tenderness in the way
you cut yourself away from me. If only
I could beat my wings and fly back to
when I was sticky with summer
and settled on your lap,
when I had no idea how much I envied
a hummingbird’s suspension
in air. Its ability
to be momentary, and full of nectar.
I took photographs of everything.
The living room. The empty shoebox. The wolf
who arrived & became my friend. The childhood
& its
music
of broken plates. There were the protests from
the white picket fence, the Dead End sign
on the cul-de-sac
lawn.
The telephone rang bright orange,
the plastic take-out containers
floated
like little Greek ships in the dirty sink water. There were the nights I slept on my mother’s floor
& could feel the dark vibrating on
my skin.
My mother’s reading glasses
dangled
blue around her neck & my brother
asleep in the basement.
We were like down
coats
hanging side by side in the
front hall closet. At night,
a soft gauze of yellow light
smoothed
over the windows of every house on our block, quiet &
buttoned up,
lawns dressed in ermine fur.
In my bedroom, I peeled
from the
walls.
