we are ear to ear, arm to arm,
barely room for elbows, limbs and arms.
my face is thin, eyes set too deep, skin a garish geisha white.
Lisa, my skinny suicidal, drunken aunt tilts her swollen neck and smiles sober.
this was back before she leaves Dave and the kids
before she leaves the yellow house and her garden,
before she leaves her homemade soaps, lined up in brightly labeled boxes.
I wonder if he glimpses
through that lens
the months ahead of fiery accusations, packed bags, relentless tears, empty drawers.
we crush into the frame
with elbows, arms and fingers mangled in embrace.
I stretch my dusty lips into a trepid strip. yours are painted wet.
poised behind, the house swells with cedar breath,
colored blue.
we stay up through the night
sharing secrets beneath the sparkling Redmond sky.
daddy touched me,
you say
with a moon-shadowed calf peeping dully through the folds of our scarlet summer quilt.
I rock our tired frames, sprawling weary, aching,
sharply in that old cedar swing..
you’re just going to sit there, you remark
as my legs begin to tire and I picture grandpa‘s bible and his pastor and his church.
I draw my bare, unpainted toes from the yellowed, springing planks;
the swinging slows.
you’re not going to say anything, try to make it better, fill up the silence, you whisper.
and we sit there, slumped, limbs interlacing red, luscious cotton.
And now you smile as the creaking silence sweeps across the porch and down the stairs where it bursts into a flame of yellow anger.
