Stateside (audio only)
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The Long Deployment
For weeks, I breathe his body in the sheet and pillow. I lift a blanket to my face. There’s bitter incense paired with something sweet, like sandalwood left sitting in the heat or cardamom rubbed on a piece of lace. For weeks, I breathe his body. In the sheet I smell anise, the musk that we secrete with longing, leather and moss. I find a trace of bitter incense paired with something sweet.
2013
Much Tattooed Sailor Aboard USS New Jersey
Squint a little, and that’s my husband
in the photograph, the sailor on the left—
the one wearing a rose composed of ink
and the Little Bo Peep who stands
before a tiny setting sun and the blur
on his forearm which might be a boat—
while the sailor on the right is leaning in,
his fingers touching the other man’s skin,
tracing what looks like the top of an anchor
2014
Before the Deployment
He kisses me before he goes. While I, still dozing, half-asleep, laugh and rub my face against the sueded surface of the sheets, thinking it’s him I touch, his skin beneath my hands, my body curving in to meet his body there. I never hear him leave. But I believe he shuts the bedroom door, as though unsure if he should change his mind, pull off his boots, crawl beneath the blankets left behind, his hand a heat against my breast, our heart rates slowing into rest.
2010