Ring-necked snakes move beneath

rusted out sheets of tin piled in the yard.

Yellow bellies carve perfectly symmetrical

S shapes into the moss, marking the Earth 

with the only sound they know. 

 

Maybe this is how I move too.

Maybe the way that I move through the world

says something about how I live. Maybe 

you move this way too. Maybe me and you move

like screams over who drove up the phone bill. 

 

What would it look like to move like the low 

moans of a drunken Sunday afternoon? Like nervous 

throat-clearing over a dinner that I’ve put too much 

of myself into so that bitterness is all you taste? 

 

Maybe the way that my joints roll looks like the small,

choked sounds that I make when I cry over how long 

it’s been since we’ve had sex, and I didn’t pretend 

I was under the weight of another body. 


Or maybe the movements are more subtle,

like the way we fill our lungs or blink, or maybe

I’m still a little bit drunk because it’s Monday

morning. I’m sitting naked under my bathrobe 

watching you pack your lunch in the dark

 

that comes in through the windows and crowds 

everything. You’re going deep underground 

to chip away at the black walls inside the Earth. 

I notice how your hands move sad, slow and heavy. 

 

Your fingers move tired as they fold slices of bologna 

the same way that I fold towels. When you kiss me goodbye

our mouths come together like magnets with the same

polarizations. When they won’t fit, we force them into place.