almost went home with a woman once {a change of wind}
I can conjure up her scent the shapes her body made
how I lifted up the sea with two fingers
{am I still this body} {the body pulled?}
I’m still married to a man
and every weekend we hike the woods by our house
our talks returning like the tides do tired of themselves
but still coming coming again and again
…sublunar… …antipodal… …sublunar… …antipodal…
{years of} {which type of attraction is real attraction?}
I’m stuck like a coral no getting out
I probably like it here sunk in my sunny tidepool
yet I trust my phone more than myself
GPS can see me walking a tight coastal path in dunes and grass
screen dimensions in such large numbers of pixels we can’t even
it’s like the depth of the sea
{I heard on NPR that Google} {knows us better than we know ourselves}
unearth the B in LGBTQ at dinner parties where my husband
laughs at jokes and my kids read on the couch
bi like a community of creatures
blooming under my underwire a rock-pool filled
with iridescent starfish battles up through my armpits into my throat
{sometimes actually say it}
one time at a hotel bar a guy tells me about his lesbian daughter
and somehow I say well, I’m bi, and…
finish my sentence as if the sweat were not fresh
in my pits limpets’ muscular feet clinging
{most often upon meeting lesbians} {I want to inform them}
I know my haircut and my skirts and my earrings
and my my husband sentences become a repeated
racket of waves eroding the shore
in fine bubbles husband and kids years and years
{have you cleared your history?} {Google knows you’re gay}
I remember folding notes from friend to friend to friend to crush
the notebook-paper’s texture turned soft and now a natural pull
between two people both dug of the same earth
seems like sympathy the loose dirt returned to delta
{what does happily married mean} {exactly?}
my husband lifts some large object and I can feel
oh, my ovaries! translucent eggs swimming the monthly current
I take his hand and squeeze my own breast with it
despite this glare surface tension
tomorrow we’ll wake to high tide the red sun crackling
our pumps open and shut in the evening the anchor pulled low
and my tongue gentle as a snail sand on its back
Josette Akresh-Gonzales is the author of Apocalypse on the Linoleum (forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Press). Her work has been published in Atticus Review, JAMA, The Pinch, The Journal, Breakwater Review, PANK, and many other journals. A recent poem has been included in the anthology Choice Words (Haymarket). She co-founded the journal Clarion and was its editor for two years. Josette lives in the Boston area with her husband and two boys and rides her bike to work at a nonprofit medical publisher. Tweets @Vivakresh.