The Glass Window
My mother used to hang things in windows so the birds would know the difference
between air and glass. Bits of red thread, a pendant too heavy for her neck.
I don’t tell her. About the night I was pressed against green glass. The night I was pressed
against green. The night I was. I remember so much. I remember nothing
at all. The fold of his stomach, him biting into stone. How I thought and still think maybe
it wasn’t. The act of remembering like something beneath the oven that the heat drags out,
a peppermint left in the pocket of a winter coat. I pay attention to the floorboards. How the weight
of my body makes them crack. I never wanted this to be about him. Don’t tell me about the
birds, my mother says, her hands over her ears because this time it was the air that killed them.
She Said She Liked It Under The Trees
She said she liked it under the trees when the leaves gave their last in yellow.
She said she hated the spring, all those trees bloomed over.
We would lie on her bed with our legs up on the white wall eating saltines
with butter while we made a list of everything we wanted.
Try to keep your hunger, someone said when she died in the summer.
I ate flour and bone. Measured the distance between two cups on the table.
The green scrape of paint on the ceiling was grief. The gathering sound
of paper. Steeping my fingers in milk was grief. The way the winter stayed.
I wondered what someone meant by break. What someone meant by keep.
The thing is, when I broke I became more of me. What if I. What if she.
I plunge my fingers in this square of dirt I am calling a garden, I follow the vine.
What I am trying to say is I remember. What I’m trying to say is I remember her.
Natalie Dunn’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Believer, BOAAT, Conduit, RHINO, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere. She has received support from The Community of Writers and The Hedgebrook Foundation. She is at work on a novel. Twitter: @natalie_jane34 Instagram: @nataliejaned
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