ALL OUR SHINY DEVICES

You are my husband now. I have decided.
I'd like you to be shorter—yes, just like that,
thank you. I hate craning my neck to kiss.
Now I will never crane my neck. Hooray!
Here is a basket of petals and a white cake.
Throw handfuls of one at our feet, the other
at my face. What?—fine, now they're both
baskets of petals. Come on, throw them at me.
I'm so glad you're my husband. When we're
together, I never feel as if I am cleverly
disguised as a human person. That's how I knew
I could marry you—how I knew I would never
again walk sixty blocks home from therapy
for no reason I can pronounce. What?
It doesn't matter. You are my husband now.
Look at our kitchen, look at all our shiny
devices! Turn the crank on this one, it peels
an apple. Here are one hundred apples—
will you peel them for me? Thank you,
honey. I am going to make a pot of coffee
and spill a little on the yellow tablecloth.
When I knock over a mug and it shatters
on the tile floor, let's both stare at the pieces
until they arc back onto the table—not
mended, no, more like never broken. Soon
enough, the three goats that bleat inside me
will turn into a single goat, and it will never
look away from you. I promise, I promise.

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NOTES FOR ENDGAME ESSAY

Between us, two backpacks, books piled like kindling
on the back corner cafe table—ours whenever we can claim it:

whenever it's not too crowded here, the second floor of the grocery store
where, on winter afternoons, everyone gathers to do homework and drugs,

to stay warm. Lately we've been living here. Lately all my English essays
have led me to the same conclusion: a kind of silence

that has nothing to do with the frozen Hudson, or forgetting, or family dinners                 
we won't go home for, a kind of silence it takes so many tries to get to:

weeks of class, a lot of really bad poems; albums you will always associate
with the R train—morning commute—and I will always associate

with winter afternoons. I gulp black coffee, you buy an entire
rotisserie chicken for dinner, and between us, two backpacks, the essay

I won't finish, the air your voice swims through. What do we know except
the snow piling up on the sidewalks has fallen over so many other islands,

what the fuck do we know except we read this book and liked it.

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