Desert Triptych, and: Lifestyle Factors

Desert Triptych

You have to learn to say, wrong was done here.You have to learn to say who did it.In October, a wolf walkedin the Grand Canyon for the first time in twenty years—      the last October I still wanted      to know the copper riveting      your jeans with my tongue—& scientists tracked the wolf four hundred miles beyond her boundary.In other words, she broke her boundary. Other-placed, she lickedrocks for water. Tracked seams in granite with the wet pressedtrouble of her thirst. She brought wolf-shaped shadow backto the canyon. Gave that rose-riven ground her good wolfweight. & every day that month I returned to the search bar whereI pressed keys to mean grand + wolf + canyon and the orderdidn’t matter, there she was. Still safe. No headline yet saiddead. I hadn’t learned yet that return can be a kind of prayer.Or that prayer can be a kind of hurt. I loved you & you lovedGod. Now my fingers know what they meant then as they foundthat site again & again, a rosary of keys. They were psalming—~praying—    Desert mother, show me your palm, teach    me roughness. I want a mysticism that snarls    & shakes its salt. I am tired of Jesus. Tired of    the people who carry his name in their mouths    & never bite down. Give me blood & gravity.    What it means to have a body is all I know              of God—~At the end of November, a farmer shot the wolf. That December,I came to the desert, to your bed, & slept in that loved dark. Youropen mouth pressed against my throat, my open mouth. You said,Canyonlands keep their own religion. The roosters down your streetwore their small eyes hard as turquoise—one night, we watched them fight with silver feet. A man took a blood-blind bird & put its headinto his mouth & sucked. Your hand tightened on my jeans.The man spat out dark clots & the bird could breathe again. Spit-cleaned, could see to wound right. & the thirst in my throat, rising—

Lifestyle Factors

I am waiting at the campus clinic for my friend,trying to count the times I apologized this week.The last time: a minute ago, to the scrubbed nursestomping by, just in case I was in her way. On our wayhere, my friend asked me to pull over so she could throw up.I’m so sorry, she gasped, gagging with flu. Oh honey,I hummed, my hands gathering her hair. The worldwants women to stop apologizing now. It wants to breakour tongues, our good tongues running wild with the sorrythat it taught. Say you’re sorry—and I did, and I did,and I did. Whatever it was. Whenever they said. My mouthknew the score. Before I could read, my tongue readthe story of Eve’s mouth, how she bit, how she ate, how sheknew. Then the shame, the clothes, the banishing.There’s no God there. The history of women and apologyis a history of our bodies—burned, stoned, shrouded,drowned. Buried, unbelieved. And now the world is boredof our sorry mouths. Every time a lover says, you don’thave to apologize, or the internet buzzes about the waywomen talk, another sorry slips of my tongue, involuntaryas water falling into water. My sorry drops easy as a dress.It loves to be said and I’ll say it. Habit, tic, mouth-memory,spell that kept me safe. But not always. That’s the trickof it. I am Pavlov’s dog for the word sorry. I am trained.And now sorry is one more way to be wrong, to be hungry,the secret stone I carried stolen and thrown right back at me.In the clinic, I stop counting apologies to read a posteron the wall listing Lifestyle Factors That Can Leadto Pregnancy Loss. Smaller print tells me Not All LossCan Be Controlled. The factors: Smoking | Drinking |          Drugs | A Sedentary Lifestyle |          Domestic...