[ToC]

 

TWO TREES WITH TWO HOLLOWS

Maya Miller

 

His arm slack, extended through the muscle of hers, uses 
their shared scaffolding to pull himself against her back, pull 

them both out of bed. The knuckles of her knees, two loose 
but still bolted joints, creak beneath their pooled weight. Her 

body, its little rivers full of signals, knows how to share 
its frame. In the mirror, a strange form with familiar shoulders 

holds her stare until late morning darkens the room. Two trees 
with Two hollows, he whispers, and the words fin around 

and around her head, chasing each other's soft tails with sharp teeth. 
There is one version of the day in which it is cloudy and they sit 

below a television's bluish flush, her spooning wet bread 
into his mouth, another in which it is sunny and they stand 

on the lawn, her body indented by his, and he names each thing 
she can point to. You, me, sky, grass, us. Her hair, long and undyed, 

trips across his teeth in the wind. Both versions end how they started: 
him still until she moves; her asleep until he wakes.

 

 

 

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This poem exists within my ongoing exploration of the inevitability and necessity of (inter)dependence. In that exploration, I've been reading [this] and [this] and [this].