Lake of the Clouds Writes to Marianne

Come to me bare legs bloody. Walk along my asphalt desert rim. Let your limbs swell on my edge, grow fat. My cold water shimmers: forget that you’re sluggish.

Forget that your marriage vow was a volley. A shot fired in self-defense that ended one skirmish. In the hot-spring with yellow stones, cool desert night,

I am the watering hole. You have no hand left for him to hold. No dried figs for him to fertilize, no reason to cradle his seeds in your pouch. Run farther westward.

Tiny eyes peer from the shadows he casts like fishing lines. He reels babies toward him: like sandwiches, they mean nothing. The marriage you two had here was a mirage.

You were a pink dress, white hat on a mountain trail. Your picnic of ring bologna was a rosary you ran around repeating. He fell down and kissed your red couch. It was never you he saw,

hazy, in the distance. How did he construct you, alone, in your bedroom at night? Leave again. Walk out on the woman who had his miscarriage, who carried his worst

even though you weren’t ready. Walk out on the woman who grew into a thing you weren’t. Come, be a sinking blue raft. A sack of air blown up like a beer belly. Tattoo your wrists with other love.

Leak from too many holes. You stay there and you’ll sink faster, so walk away. He’ll always think you wanted to be got.