My knees hurt today after
two hours of trying to fix
the dishwasher. It’s
a bullshit life, but
you know that. We come back
to each other to disprove
that fact, tasting the firm
buttons of your nipples
after the kids sleep, after a perfect
pumpkin soup, vegetables from
our own garden. We spent
part of each hot
green morning foiling the
squash bugs and grubs, hand-picking the
micro-jewelry of their eggs from
the leaves’ undersides, symmetrical gray
cities that crush easily under
nail. My cancer has yet
to be discovered, its wild runners,
their erratic zigzags into
muscle and bone before
the big party in lung or liver
or gut. Kiddo helped with the dishwasher,
holding the wrench or flashlight
as I invented curses for
the makers of spring and nut,
he parroting and I too preoccupied
to correct myself or him,
the fake wood beneath us
bubbled and bowed from unseen
leaks, while the skull-faced
hierophant, visible only to me,
watched dispassionately from
the barstool, his suit of indigo
velour, worn but immaculately made,
buttons of silver, each stamped or
etched with a different face,
all people I’ve known,
Father at his throat,
as happy as I’d ever seen him,
frozen that way, like the day he
told us we’d be having a little
brother. In the cabinet gap behind
the extracted machine, the mice
have streaked what remains
of the original floor with
their shitty feet, leaving prints
small and clear as florets of thyme.