This Moment
Tonight I am awake in twilight’s cool sobrietyContemplating the expanse of a momentDiscerning the octaves of silence from dreamsThis moment I am dreaming, because a woman can have many lives.
This moment a woman is pretending to sleepHer husband nuzzling her ear, his legs juxtaposed on her thighsSoft, raspy whispers of things she does not want to hearShe murmurs a tepid, “I love you,” because he expects it.
This moment a child is crying, skin bracing the cold nitrogenOf the atmosphere, that instant life enters her poresDisplacing amniotic warmth with dryness and indifferenceAnd she cries, as we all do, because it hurts.
This moment a mother is also crying, her salt flowing onto plastic veinsConducting her breath back into the dark tunnel where it all began.Morphine numbing a somber swelling in her breast, and she criesBecause time is evaporating and her thoughts are yet unfinished.
This moment a farmer is awakening, darkness precedingAn opalescent morning; the cock is crowing and his daughterMilking the cows; she moves on to the corn-studded landscape.The hoe is tough, but she ploughs onward because that is her identity.
This moment a writer is obliterating wordsElectronic letters dancing across a screen, visible and invisibleBetween intervals, inspiration mingled with fatigue, the sweatSpilling into her eyes, stinging, and she fears she may go blind.
This moment a woman is reminiscing the deadSteam swirling from the hazelnut coffee he used to makeThat she continues to drink with cream, allowing the hauntingTo occur, because the table is empty and she is alone.
This moment is memory alive, a continuous pearl on a braceletCongealed salt, sweat, and spit pressured into an imperfect sphereSituated one by one, each making possible the nextComing full circle around a woman’s wrist.
Tonight I am awake in twilight’s cool sobrietyContemplating the expanse of a momentDiscerning the octaves of silence from dreamsThis moment I am dreaming, because a woman can have many lives.
This moment a woman is pretending to sleepHer husband nuzzling her ear, his legs juxtaposed on her thighsSoft, raspy whispers of things she does not want to hearShe murmurs a tepid, “I love you,” because he expects it.
This moment a child is crying, skin bracing the cold nitrogenOf the atmosphere, that instant life enters her poresDisplacing amniotic warmth with dryness and indifferenceAnd she cries, as we all do, because it hurts.
This moment a mother is also crying, her salt flowing onto plastic veinsConducting her breath back into the dark tunnel where it all began.Morphine numbing a somber swelling in her breast, and she criesBecause time is evaporating and her thoughts are yet unfinished.
This moment a farmer is awakening, darkness precedingAn opalescent morning; the cock is crowing and his daughterMilking the cows; she moves on to the corn-studded landscape.The hoe is tough, but she ploughs onward because that is her identity.
This moment a writer is obliterating wordsElectronic letters dancing across a screen, visible and invisibleBetween intervals, inspiration mingled with fatigue, the sweatSpilling into her eyes, stinging, and she fears she may go blind.
This moment a woman is reminiscing the deadSteam swirling from the hazelnut coffee he used to makeThat she continues to drink with cream, allowing the hauntingTo occur, because the table is empty and she is alone.
This moment is memory alive, a continuous pearl on a braceletCongealed salt, sweat, and spit pressured into an imperfect sphereSituated one by one, each making possible the nextComing full circle around a woman’s wrist.
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