(dishwater) blond + wifely

Over the kitchen sink, silhouetted

buzzing in dim, yellow light

The soft curve of your elbows and the red spots along

the back of your thighs

You haven’t shaved in weeks

So seventies, I said with my head in your lap

and your big, crowded smile lit up like the street

on New Year’s Eve when it’s all glitter & vomit

And now you walk through my reality

still like some angel in the waking world

still like some agent of the Sandman

leading me down some rabbit hole

There’s nothing so delicate

as watching you do dishes

with your rubber gloves pulled pink up to those downy elbows

When I bought them you

said How wifely. How very Frank-n-Furter

How very much I wish that I wanted to make you a wife

You! With your wheat-beer hair that draped along your shoulders

and spills down your back like liquid sunlight

I don’t think I believe in marriage, I told you

when you said you thought you might love me

I don’t believe in love much, either

That’s okay, you said, black eyes holding mine

wet and doe-like, tender

I don’t need reciprocation. Love is exactly that,

unbridled, biting, one-sided, obsessive

I saw you cancelled on your therapist, I called

from the sofa. You stood, washing the pasta pot

of vodka sauce. You don’t turn to reply

You give it a few moments of thought

There’s nothing any shrink can tell me

about myself that I don't already know

You have all the answers? I ask. At the age of twenty-one?

No, you say, and I watch your nude back twist

shoulder blades shifting as you

drop the pot into the sink

The clatter lights my skin with goosebumps

No, I don’t have all the answers. But I don’t wish to hunt for them

Life becomes dull when

there’s somebody whispering to you

the things that you ought to discover

yourself

I like you most like this, I say

You look like Laura Palmer. You look like Alice through the

Looking-Glass

You snaggletooth smile and kiss me with those

pink, wet gloves still on

Hands around my neck, slick & you know it disturbs me

how I’ll need to shower once you release me

But in this moment I let those rubber hands

lead me down the rabbit hole

Red lips, black eyes

blond hair