Janelle Aslin
1.
She studies the lemon-yellow tumors spread over
the front yardóher hands working blindly at the scouring
piled up in the sink.
She is old in motherhood and all that it carries, having
bore herself three children and with it bore too this momentó
her staring blankly out the kitchen window, muttering curses
for those bright blooming weeds and for her husband
who accepts them.
The thought that God does not love herónever really loved heró
washes over as she rinses the sink clean: not love,
if this is all he wished on me.
And her husband, sensing melancholy in her distant pause
of work, feels guilty for enjoying the way the moment washes
over himóthe summer light waning through the glass the way
summer light tends to, bathing his familiar wife in some new color.
He draws up behind and unties the knot in her apron,
his knuckles bumping against the fleshy small of her back.
2.
She wants to tell him there is cancer in the front yardóproof
their whole lot is diseased. But her husbandís worn hands,
heavy and slow, fumble about her. The apron drops away.
She will have to clean that too.
He believes he loves her again. But hasnít he always loved her?
Or is this just the way a man feels when thereís cool soft skin
beneath his thumbs? Her body doesnít harden against his touch
as he thought it would, as he had come to know heróa stiff
wooden edge. This tender wanting of caress so foreign, he worries
she might notice his incompetence.
3.
His hands tremble, and she feels it as short, delicate spasms
when they reach around her, unbutton her dress, bump against
her naked breast. It is old and it is tired, and it is a breast
that will not register being touched, no matter what she wants.
no matter what flood of desire or desperation pulls at her mind.
She cannot feel it.
She does not move, and he is all too aware of the border
he has swept across, progressing into foreign territoryóno,
enemy territory. So he stares out the window at the overgrown
lawn, careful to avoid the reflection of his wife, crying, maybe.
His hands become still on her breast. The moment pregnant
with his own weakness.
4.
But it is only pain that floods her, and she wonders
if it will just drown her this time.
He buries his head deep into the folds of her neck;
her heart does not swoon in her chest.
5.
Outside, the weeds sway, grow, reach for the house,
the wife, her breast, like little carnivorous suns.
Dandelions, he whispersóbefore letting go.