“Rings”

The ginger looked better an hour ago

before I tore it up and swished it in the soy abyss

with my chopstick

the fiscally regrettable

rice grains lay like little dead bugs

now a rock in my gut

but I can’t look up

not yet.

 

Tonight is six months into our tenth year,

evening three thousand four hundred and sixty-seven

nearly ninety-two thousand hours

of fried eggs, snow-ins, final papers, indie films, shows at the Bowery,

hangovers, autumn fires, drives north for no reason, apartment keys, IKEA dates, baby kittens, friends’ weddings, Christmases, recessions,

dying dads in December, dead engines in February,

wartime and reality television,

of making the bed, cleaning our hair from the sink, saving quarters for laundry, peeing with the door open,

of love notes in your work bag,

engraved watches under pillows and puzzle boxes holding rings,

of our figures changing shapes,

of learning our bodies in detail,

avid readers of brail

taking turns in the dark,

of countless rotations of the clock hands in arguments,

our merging and splitting,

secrets and confessions,

of ice outs and cop-outs,

“I shouldn’t have said thats” and “who the fuck is shes,”

of jolting jabs catapulting me out the door

and your green watery gazes

pulling me back.

 

Across from me you sit tonight,

confident arm sprawled over the empty chair,

rain beads on the window behind you,

eyes affixed on a white board of specials,

our deafening silence filled with stranger chatter.

Coughing on heart splinters, I stare at your neckline,

perfect.

 

—Bernadette Malavarca