La Dispute Woman (reading)
You in the living room
You on a Tuesday afternoon
A breeze seen when the curtains move
You by the window with both feet up on the couch
Where you sit and you read and I watch you
From the office the sunlight frames your silhouette
I think of lighting fireworks, I think of pirouettes
I idly write down observations on the scene
Like do the blueprints name the rooms alone?
Do we name them on our own?
We hardly live in there
You with a book propped on your knees
A breeze seen in your coffee steam
I’m in the office thinking back to rules of poetry
It’s fourteen lines, the last two rhyme, what does
pentameter mean?
You in the living room
Legs bent at forty-five degrees
I write AB AB, try to find your rhyme scheme
I look for objects on the desk with which to sculpt
your image best
What would I name this could I paint it “Woman
(reading)?” “Girl (at rest)?”
I remember it so well watching you shifting your
weight, turning the page, I can see it all there
Inside a living room where only I live and never go in
A role in name alone
And I pause where I am for a second when I hear your
name
Sometimes I think I see your face in improbable places
Do those moments replay for you?
When I’m suddenly there and then won’t go away
When you’re sitting in the living room reading for the
afternoon
Do you put your book down look and try to find me
there?
Sometimes I think of all the people who lived here
before us
How the spaces in the memories you make change the room
from just blueprints
To the place where you live
When you leave here
When you go from a home
You take all that you own but the memories echo
On hardwood floor in the living room
Tore the carpet the scratches below that we found
And the wine stain on the couch
We got drunk and decided we’d still try to move it
around
And I can’t tell what the difference is between the
ones that we made and the ones that we didn’t make
They all conjure images still
Where you sit and you read in the sunlight aware that I
watch
And I live alone now
Save for the echoes
I live alone now
Save for the echoes
