You cite distance, you cite indifference. Why do I know
when they first measured the circumference of the world,
they sat back and sighed? I wish maps were more tactile,
promiscuous like kitchen grout. It has taken to me, this task
of learning new grooves to dispel your memory, the lines
marking your palms as anything other than mine. I’m a nun
when it comes to scrubbing. A little elbow grease is godly.
Some of us must compose through muscle. Some of us had
to compose through muscle. I recall reading that women
found language through the monotony of cleaning, the strokes
reminiscent of the returns in poetry. The muse is through,
not out of the wound. When I learned the word chilblains, why,
I said it each day. I adore a word that I can see. I hope in
glory, there is the color red and itching. Any reminder of being
bitten. Any reminder of our bruised knees. Did you know
mine did not, the next morning, because you had me so much
on my back, because foolishly, I thought you wanted to
learn me and my fickle geographies, the face I made when we
finally joined our aching. I carry now a cave in your wake.
I go there often with my bucket, lose myself in paint. What is
this impulse to enter darkness with tenderness? To forsake
knowing in lieu of want? My, how these questions only echo
when one is alone, hoping that with her eyes closed, she can
find, once again, that nervous hand of yours to hold—