March
Tamiko Beyer

I love her but I forget to turn the lights off.
The flies arrive and sometimes leave through the open window.
Spring has not yet come but previews play in the air. We are remembering allergies.
The cats perpetually leave silver hairs across the floor.
She never shuts the cupboard door and once I turned a flame on under an empty pot.

We rarely cook fish, but when they sweat in their bags, we put them on ice. "Fish hate
plastic like ladies hate nylons," says the woman who caught and sold us
the snapper. The sun's glare off the ocean waves lining the skin around her eyes.
I love her like the way we arch. Differently. Skills and gills.

Our third wheel: backlit screen, lit as molecule, as feather duster and mote--all the cyber
at our fingers and tips.
When her guitar strings curl like ladybug wings, my sneakers hum along, neat as whiskey.
She forgets to push in her chair though the lamp's not yet hung and the bathroom needs
caulking.
"I have caulk" she says and I laugh at the homophone.
We laugh forward unless we recall filial piety--then we brush our tangled hair.

Before, or, after.
And her mother says, "Do you have the fathering instinct?"
The mobile spins ten times clockwise and ten times counterclockwise.

Some ladies do love nylons and I love her fishnet stockings and the floor will want to be
swept again tomorrow.

Published in diode, winter 2009, volume 2, number 2