Life is a State of Siege, A War to the Last Woman
        —Randall Jarrell

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, I walk into his
                                and right back out again to call my family: It's going to be awhile.

I need this drink with this man from two lives and three towns back,
                                where spoons and forks tangled the yards.

His hands on my body I don't need but I might have hidden parts
                                of my self in his, so let me flesh out my past

on those Revolutionary War streets where I rented rooms for nothing
                                in an old boardinghouse, becoming the only tenant and caretaker

of rabbits and yellowjackets simmering in groundnests. I need this man,
                                who is not my husband, to break in my heart its love of endings,

its longing for the dying engines of twilight when the dishes are clean,
                                the laundry folded, the boys asleep. Not only childhoods get mislaid

in the terror of afternoons strangled into meaninglessness.
                                What would that girl who ate bread and cheese under a bridge

on a dirty beach with strangers want with my life? How I miss her and
                                the letter writer, lizard of many, dance-hall girl, lugger of sandstone,

stacker of wood, thrift queen, bookstore haunt, tinkerer of spaces—
                                my dear companions dwindled to one, siloed and happy—

mother-wife. I'll be home soon. For now I long to be fluid, a tributary
                                for all those selves rushing and laughing into our home. I know you all

would love me. This old boyfriend with eager eyes writes his number on a napkin
                                and I take it. I take it to mean it's time to pack up, return

those rooms to vacancy, strip the sheets, bank the fire, turn the knob quietly
                                on my own sleeping house, and climb into bed with my youngest,

go blank with the warm damp smell of him. His words, thick and dreamclogged,
                                have you had enough of me, momma? burst my heart, that ripe fig.

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Copyright © 2020 Leigh Anne Couch All rights reserved
from NELLE
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission