I once had a husband who would stare
at things that looked a lot like things that
he would stare at. He was made of salt
and I would lick him until my teeth fell out.
We would spend the day panicked that another
like this one would come again and then sit
and watch TV and laugh and fall asleep and
wake up in different rooms, unsure of how
that happened. The stalking would surrender
to the brief moment when we knew, we just
knew, that the other one was out of love and
didn’t know how to say it, we said so little so
often. We would take trips to somewhere and
always find that somewhere else was better once
we got home. One day he plunged a knife into
the kitchen table and said, “I think you should be
more beautiful,” and I agreed, not wanting to
cause trouble. But the knife stood sticking
straight up, even after we packed up our things
and moved to someplace else. The knife still
stood straight up after we parted, and divvied
up our belongs.
I told him I wanted the kitchen
table, because that was what I wanted. And even
though it didn’t fit in my new home, I made it fit.
