We ripped out linoleum for new kitchen tile
and I dream of smashing glasses, dropping plates,
a flick of the wrist or simply letting go my grip.
There is nothing so easy as opening one’s hand,
yet I withhold from myself the pleasure.
At dusk the cardinal pair peers in the window, inquiring.
Don’t bother asking what’s for dinner: always safflower,
the anti-squirrel seed. And me with my clanging pots boiling
over with salted water, windows fogging. My fist clears
a circle so I – they – can see.
What more could we want from love than to be fed?
The finger sucked clean, the beak pried open, the sacrifice
of what could have been kept for ourselves. To love is to hand
off, to offer up, to place in the mouth. The holy communion
of pasta carbonara, of pearl-like seed cracked by another.
Countertop fruit bowl lives still as a painting, replenishes weekly
without revealing its lack. You bring me this unskinned fruit,
let me choose it. My fingers close around globular orange, hearted
apple. Our hands give up emptiness for weight that won’t shatter,
only rest heavy in palm before the opening.
Sarah Layden’s poetry has appeared in Margie, Reed Magazine, Beeswax, and elsewhere. She is the author of a short story collection, Imagine Your Life Like This; a novel, Trip Through Your Wires; and a flash fiction chapbook, The Story I Tell Myself About Myself. Layden’s fiction can be found in Boston Review, Blackbird, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other places, and her nonfiction appears in Salon, The Millions, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at IU Indianapolis.