After the honeymoon, all the painted ladies feast
in other people’s gardens, our flowerbed a tilth
of unopened pupas. You worry death is what idles
at the corners of our mouths. We miscarry our words.
It takes months for us to kiss again.
I don’t tell you how much it hurts when you finally open
your blouse and speak of tiny bones—to press my lips
upon your stomach and whisper past the surface
would be an act of tending the wrong thing.
There are blighted remnants of the phlox once nurtured,
rootwork stilled between flutters
like the bulb of my voice. A child begins and ends
as a lesson on emptiness: we don’t believe in it
until it breaks us. The long ache follows, and we fill.
Samuel Piccone is the author of the chapbook Pupa (Anhinga Press, 2018). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including, Sycamore Review, Passages North, Denver Quarterly, and The Pinch. He received an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University and serves on the poetry staff at Raleigh Review. Currently, he resides and teaches in Nevada.
Website: samuelpiccone.com
Twitter: @samuelpiccone
Photo by Michael VH on Foter.com / CC BY