SLOWLY
she thought she loved him thought she loved him for the perfection of his skin its smooth-surfaced honesty and there were other things about him she thought she loved there was their history the way things never happened between them and how when they spoke about what might have been a nostalgia rose like humidity and
anything could grow there any idea could bloom in their midst like what might have been and we all know how we love what we do not know like the way dawn brings shapes slowly into view and she saw him like this slowly so it took her years to know to find out who he was and who she was to him it was a process of chemistry how the dark inks of their mystery wrote a story but how as the day opened before them and the shadows beneath them lengthened into view and she saw how his skin was no longer poreless and her words strengthened in her insistence that he arrange his life different well things changed they changed it changed and everything between them seemed to fit into chapter headings for him it was the same story told to him before it was the story of women being strong and wanting things and it was the story of a peaceful man wanting a quiet life and for her it was the story of feeling loved the way flowers are loved tended to in the early morning hours but then how they wilt in the sun under the scrutiny of light and how the heat beats down on them and how the bees take the center of them slowly their pollen like a treasure carried to a distant place
without her
Bobbi Lurie's three poetry collections are The Book I Never Read, Letter from the Lawn and Grief Suite, all published by CW Books. Her chapbook, to be let in the back porch, will be published in 2012 by Dancing Girl Press.