Work Text:
“Looking-Glass”
by Martin K. Blackwood
There is a glass of orange juice
abandoned on the table.
Lukewarm it sits and sediments –
and spoils, probably, unless
I step in now and drink it down
or take it upstairs with me.
There is a glass of orange juice
on your side of the table
yet again, and overhead it rains
down on me: steady pattering
of laptop keys, your own particular
Morse code of squeaky letters,
tired switches, gaskets worn
like cartilage, arthritic joints –
I know you understand them,
though I as yet do not.
There is a glass of orange juice,
now haloed in its condensate
a foot or two, at best, from all the coasters.
And now I’m seeing, too,
the blanket left unfolded
and the window latch undone,
the socks between the chair-legs
and the washer not yet run –
the clacking stops.
Forgotten something, have you?
Then it’s back again, the ceaseless storm
on the other side of the overpass.
Ten years ago today we sat together,
all egglike and frumpy in secondhand quilts,
eating cold toast on colder steps
between the dingy flat and nameless street.
The dawn was gray, so we brought our own
sunrise, made from concentrated
warmth – life, a self-involved thing,
must be sustained and recognized
by that which is also alive.
You cried that day because you realized
that you could taste the oranges.
I cried to learn you couldn’t taste them before.
Today an older, warmer sun
is clear between the clouds
and dusty curtains, spotlighting this
dirty pot left on the old gas stove, that
cat-fur tumbleweed beside the baseboard, this
fingerprinted glass of orange juice
you likely meant to bring up to your desk:
the color of a more familiar dawn,
so normal as to be forgettable.
I breathe the ghost of two in one
shampoo and conditioner and know
that the window was open because you were watching
the birds, and you took off your socks here
to dance with me while dinner simmered, slow
and patient with our antics.
In goes the blanket to the waiting wash,
unspoiled by our forgetfulness,
and for a moment it too holds the shape
of you, asleep on my numb leg
and dreaming for once, I think,
of silly things. The pot –
and what remains of your secret recipe –
has earned a nice long soak.
I pick up the glass –
contents swirling, like galaxies
but slower –
as I have before, and will again.
I dance between the stairway creaks
and chase the quickly-climbing sun,
finding you hunched already at your desk –
still in last night’s sleep sweats, a little squirrely
and startled by my arrival –
caught up as you were in writing a poem
for me.