Even the smallest things
hurt. Take the woman in Taiwan kneeling
by a grave as dirt flew into her eye.
Swollen shut, it bulged, oozed, stung. Scrape, scrape scrape—
a sound like a scalpel, like feet against
gravel, like leaves tap tap tapping glass or…
Or maybe it was a tingle forking
through her like lightning over water.
When doctors pried open her eye, they found
four tiny bees feasting on her tears.
Was she grateful that they had dried her sorrow
and that she had quenched their thirst?
Or was she struck by the way grief and pain,
thick and sticky, lodge so deeply
and so unexpectedly within the body?
Dream of Skulls
Kari Gunter-Seymour’s “Untitled,” photograph
No one taught me how
to handle fragile things:
the lone egg on
the countertop
that glistened
like a polished skull.
Or the one-inch worry
dolls made of sticks
that cracked like bones
under my pillow
where I placed the tooth
that would not
give, would not give
until finally it did.
When I held a baby
for the first time,
I wanted nothing
more than to give
him back, afraid my fingers,
curious and eager,
might slip into the soft
spot in his head,
might press
a little too hard.
Each ridge tender,
ripe like the sweetest
peach. In its center: a pit
tinged crimson.
The trace of where
lips had once been.
Swallows
Swallows
on telephone wires
always remind me
of clothespins. Their
shoulders and wings
form the grooves.
The springs: the heart—
Although from
a different angle,
these birds
resemble minute
marks on a clock,
as if time could be
stretched out
on a line like so—
Yes, I can almost
picture it: this instant
pinning up a sheet
onto which I project
memories I wish
I had had but were never
mine. A yellow boat.
A lake. A teenage daughter
and her father.
How silently
they glide through water,
which swallows their
every gesture.
He paddles on the left,
she on the right
in perfect
synchronicity. As she smiles,
her dimples pocket
sunlight
that also skims
his graying hair.
Above them,
leaves carve blue
shapes from sky,
air, and water.
So too, do their oars.
One stroke is
curved like a bird,
one is straight like
a wire in the waves
of memory.
Each slice is even
and sure, the way
their love
chisels, but never cuts
too close to bone.
The Blueprint
Edward Hopper, Girl at Her Sewing Machine, Painting, 1921
Those who saw her day after day
never once asked what she was
thinking. If they had, they would
have stepped into a world
where lavender captures
Mondays, wood and nails conjure
Wednesdays, and apple blossoms
set the scene for Thursdays.
Some days cotton was the color
of yellow paint, at other times,
it tasted like macaroons. Foolish,
careless, ridiculous girl.
You’ll be a good wife, an even
better mother, her aunt dreamed
up for her. You’ll be an accountant
or a lawyer her father urged.
What about going to Paris
or Rome?, her mother asked
flipping through travel magazines.
The girl nodded and smiled.
Behind her, light cast shadows
in the shapes of tunnels
that threaded through moss-
covered cities to the bluest
estuaries, to houses stitched
with tulips and baby’s breath,
to hummingbirds weaving
archways and bridges out of air.
A needle was her starting point.
The window frame was a foundation.
She would build from there.
SHANNON K. WINSTON‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Dialogist, SWWIM Every Day, The Inflectionist Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Zone 3 among others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and several times for the Best of the Net. She earned her MFA at Warren Wilson College and currently teaches in Princeton University’s Writing Program.
