Minneapolis, and: Us, Defrosting, and: Reading Rising Signs

Minneapolis

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I blame the layer of gray on June gloom. It is August. My feetare blue again and I wish I had packed more sweaters. I see this asa way of looking at the world. Or at least a reminder of winter,of four months in Los Angeles. Watching the summer unraveland then return again to homeostasis. Across the street, the Finnishbakery turns on its lights. There is an unfamiliar softness to mycity. California lost a good one, she tells me the day after I leave.Waking up at 5:30 am, the sun takes its last morning before snowlayering. I put on Marvin Gaye and let the album play out and by the lastsong understand she is not coming here, not tonight. I forget sometimes, it’sonly me who left. Goldenrod and monarchs, the interstate I took from San    Antonioto Duluth, when my yoga teacher tells me I am enough I am on the groundand start crying in a room full of strangers. I am home for the first timein two years. When people look at me they no longer see me as sickand I don’t know what to make of this. North, South my body yearnsfor what it could not name. I remember street names but forget where they lead    to.

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I wake up wrapped in her woven blankets, my face resting on her back.Soaking in sweat I still don’t understand my new body. How nowI am the one who cradles her, rubbing my hand through her scruffy hair.You look good, she tells me. Do you feel good? I think I do but afterall this waiting I wonder why I am not everything I thought I’d be.Replaying that first night at the dive bar: Hush, sweet thing. You are just    returning to this world. When I lucid dream in her bed I choose to throw myselfout a car window. Next time I’ll get it right. In the morning, salty blood,sweat on the bedspread. I think you have your period. The price I payto have a body again. Later, my lover puts her hand inside me. You’re ok,she whispers to the bruises on my neck. There are so many goddamn almostsand this is how cycles work: she won’t return my call and it feels like the last    time.I forget how horrible the night sweats are, a new beginning to a body so    deadenedfrom the static. Last year my evenings were a skeleton compass, armsdreaming of the feeding after the fire. Not tonight. Tonight. I recreatea summer without the holding. This time let go and feed fire between her legs,wrapped under blankets. Her head arched. Our bodies, reshaping.

Us, Defrosting

For the first time in months I don’t remember my dreams.When she puts her hand inside me I don’t even know it’s there.My upstairs neighbor rearranges his furniture and I organize chairsin my head, forgetting about the hand that cautiously maps its way.

At night, I clean my kitchen counters with a rag and lemonbut all this does is even out the mess. I fled this body and now I’m stuckrubbing surfaces with my hand that smells like wet snow. When we’retogether we talk about the finer things: the year this house was built,

how the owl in the backyard so quickly finds another mate once his firstlove dies. Nobody talks about the death of a her, the inevitable hollowness.I want to come back as a bird, you tell me. How foolish we are to thinkthat birds find satisfaction in flight. I spend weeks reminding myself

of the reasons I can’t see her, only to smell cigarettes, her armgrazing my shoulder, looking me from bottom to top. She tells meshe wants me. We don’t want to wish them luck. We can’t give them that.What if this is the best version...