“
Tom, will you let me love you in your restaurant?
i will let you make me a sandwich of your
invention and i will eat it and call
it a carolyn sandwich. then you will kiss my lips
and taste the mayonnaise and
that is how you shall love me in my restaurant.
Tom, will you come up to my empty beige
apartment and help me set up my daybed?
yes, and i will put the screws in loosely so that
when we move on it, later,
it will rock like a cradle and then you will know
you are my baby
Tom, I am sitting on my dirt bike on the deck.
Will you come out from the kitchen
and watch the people with me?
yes, and then we will race to your bedroom.
i will win and we will tangle up
on your comforter while the sweat rains from your
stomachs and foreheads.
Tom, the stars are sitting in tonight like gumball
gems in a little girl’s
jewlery box. Later can we walk to the duck pond?
yes, and we can even go the long way past the
jungle gym. i will push you on
the swing, but promise me you’ll hold tight. if
you fall i might disappear.
Tom, can we make a baby together? I want to be
a big pregnant woman with a
loved face and give you a squalling red daughter.
no, but i will come inside you and you will be
my daughter
Tom, will you stay the night with me and sleep
so close that we are one person,
no, but i will lay down on your sheets and taste
you. there will be feathers
of you on my tongue and then I will never
forget you
Tom, when we are in line at the convenience
store can I put my hands in your
back pockets and my lips and nose in your
baseball shirt and feel the crook
of your shoulder blade?
no, but later you can lay against me and almost
touch me and when i go i will
leave my shirt for you to sleep in so that always
at night you will be pressed
up against the thought of me.
Tom, if I weep and want to wait until you need
me will you promise that someday
you will need me?
no, but i will sit in silence while you rage. you
can knock the chairs down
any mountain. i will always be the same and you
will always wait.
Tom, will you climb on top of the dumpster and
steal the sun for me? It’s just
hanging there and I want it.
no, it will burn my fingers. no one can have the
sun: it’s on loan from god.
but i will draw a picture of it and send it to you
from richmond and then you
can smooth out the paper and you will have a
piece of me as well as the sun
Tom, it’s so hot here, and I think I’m being
born. Will you come back from
Richmond and baptise me with sex and cool water?
i will come back from richmond. i will smooth
the damp spiky hairs from the
back of your wet neck and then i will lick the
salt off it. then i will leave
Tom, Richmond is so far away. How will I know
how you love me?
i have left you. that is how you will know
”
”