Today's poem is by Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

Listening for Truths & Answers
       

        Reuniting was the sound of spoons clattering into drawer, of water swishing into bathtub, of broom brushing linoleum, sweeping out the dust of dirty days. These were the delicate words, like wings: I love you and I missed you and I'm so very sorry. They flapped without sound.

        Reuniting was the fixing of hinges of my front door, tap-tap-tapping them with his hammer. It was the wheezing of screen door when he opened it for me, before he let it fall back into place and snap shut.

        One day, we argued, but it was small, this exchange, like the sound of crumpled tin foil. His keys clinked on and off my counter. I love you, but why can't you and why didn't you. The shower spurted on. It was hissing hot water.

        We were both divorced and understood the sound of splatter.

        We drove to Asheville, and in a flat field whose grasses could scratch our ankles, we chose a site to set up the tent, the kind that was made of light and airy fabric and could billow and snap in the air like a whip. I told him this wasn't the way to do it, whatever he was doing, with the poles and stakes, however he was doing it, which wasn't slowly, tenderly. Which was not my way. He stopped speaking, and that night, our sleeping bags made sounds when they crinkled away from each other.

        Back at home, we argued about that's not fair, about time together and apart and who wanted more of what, you always and you never. My voice was scratchy, dry as brittle leaves. We practiced the "I feel" statement, our voices tight like too-taut strings: I feel hurt when you... and I feel angry when you.... Then he told me, I feel like you're a whiny little girl. I knew I should be angry, but I was laughing in bed next to him, and he joined in this laughter, and we sounded like exhausted rain draining from grumbling sky. We slept despite cricket chirps and locust rattles, insects whose sounds wouldn't outlast summer. I woke to blackness and prayed in rhythm to the click of his jaw. Make it clear, I pleaded to God, wanting to know if we were right or wrong together: Just please make it clear.

        In the morning, I said I was going for a walk. I didn't want him to join me, but I didn't ask him to stay behind. The words I left out were like carbon monoxide. I was clicking open the door and then banging it shut, the sound like a starting pistol—blank but piercing. My feet thudded against pavement, or pavement thudded against me, it was hard to tell which. The late summer air was moist, and if you listened, you could hear its wanting. I went on.

        Then, nearly three blocks later, the air was filled with a plea, his or mine or maybe both. He was rolling behind me in his car, then alongside me, his engine revving our mistakes, our reconciliation. The exhaust was thick and black and silently exhaled into air. He was yelling then—sticking his head out the car window—about how selfish I was, how mean, and he didn't use the I feel statement at all.

        You're going to die alone, he finally shouted, his voice as clear as the cracking ice of frozen pond, the fish unmoving, silent, far below.

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Copyright © 2023 Shuly Xóchitl Cawood All rights reserved
from "What the Fortune Teller Would Have Said
Iron Horse Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission