My husband came back one night. He told me he was in love, that they'd hit a rough patch but he was hopeful. I almost couldn't believe he was alive. 

He showed me slide film from his archive on a little light table—of beach scenes, dandelions and fireworks, microscopic bacteria, cranes, bridges, and boats, Renaissance-era medicine. He played records and we drank cocktails. He didn't ask any questions, only wanted to know if I would like more ice. After we kissed on the roof, I descended the ladder and my skirt blew up to my elbows. He fed me a wedge salad. When we kissed in bed, I wanted to say I loved him again. When we slept, I dreamt that we attended a ten-hour screening of a slide film about Jesus Christ. Then, dreamt of near-fatal accidents in an Olympic swimming pool. The olympians were rescued from the deep end by paramedics, one by one. They were strong, beautiful, almost dead.

***

In another dream, my husband crashed family Christmas on some mysterious cocktail of substances. He had been writing art criticism and publishing small pamphlets with secret messages for me to find. He looked like shit, wouldn't whisper, wouldn't leave. He melted into a chair and made inebriated pronouncements from the back of the room. He was wearing an old, favorite sweater. My family went on celebrating, but with restraint and even a measure of politeness. They pretended not to see or hear. My husband had recently returned from our old vacation spot, he told me, where he had meant to die alone. Something about a gun. He looked up at me from the chair he was melted into and said, “No one should ever travel further than New Jersey.”

***

Once upon a time, I was up all night next to my sleeping husband, wondering how my body could be so full of goo.

I suspected the culprit was my husband's work. The cycle of crisis, resolution, celebration. He had been explaining the psychology of the market, its emotional turmoil, the zero sum game, etc. when one particular emergency hit. The market rewards strong stomachs, he was saying. Around 5am, I tried to locate a free PDF of the Truman Capote story in which the author follows his maid around for a whole day of work. “A Day's Work.” The author and his maid get high together at the end. I couldn't find it, so I read scraps of articles and poetry on Instagram until I became so agitated, I had to leave. “I think I'm leaving,” I told my husband, and he said, “Are you disturbed?” “I'm upset, but we can't talk about that now.” 

Another day, the culprit was a painting in my husband's studio. I didn't recognize it. The portrait was so striking, so alive with personality, that I worried about its subject, who must have once been a real, full-bodied person. She was intelligent. She was impenetrable! Her staring was frank, calculating, rudely personal. I couldn't exactly relate to her, though she might have been my more beautiful cousin. It could have been a matter of taste and age that separated us. She would always be just a bit older, taller, and more expensive. She might have been European. 

She stared and stared one morning, all day and all night once, out of her one dark eye and her other misty gray one. The gray eye was flat, focused. Her blonde-green hair matched the strip of wallpaper above her. She knew exactly where to sit. She understood Downtown People and the big deal about getting dressed. She was amazing in bed, or she hardly ever had it. Both possibilities were devastating.

***

I was startled by my husband's strangeness. I loved him more than words, and I was jealous of this love. 

My husband addressed my nose like a person. He prepared the coffee, and when the coffee got cold, he made it hot again. 

Meanwhile, the live demo of the cyber truck failed when the shock-proof glass shattered. The hopped-up commentators enjoyed donuts, milkshakes, chicken wings and barbecue sauce. It all streamed like poems. 

To be so certain of my husband's sweet mysteries was to leave this world behind; to say there was an otherwise; to be so moved, disturbed, or anything at all.

What used to thrill me: the way my big husband made language flip over itself. Him pacing the room, full of ideas and experience. 

My husband thought he was exceptionally handsome, but his pants were down when it didn't count. He didn't have the bandwidth for oceanic feeling. Even if I telegraphed it, he'd say I was making “demands.” He was responding to other messages. 

Then, he was a park full of deer at night. What happened when I was young or a story my mother told me. A big dog. Good habits. A genius who called himself eccentric. Cold like a star. He pretended to eat my nose and he explained the market to me. He was a big baby. He was blonde.

I appreciated him musically, aesthetically, synesthetically, athletically, and historically-speaking. He should have appealed more to my senses than anybody, but my senses had nothing to do with myself.

Of course, there are other problems — what happens to children, what happens to produce. The baseboards. The thesaurus. And I'm afraid there are words too expansive to be employed. The ones I want to use.

*What is the point of all this,* asked a friend recently. *The whole market is only refuse and leftovers. The poem isn't salable.*

I almost give up on poetry. Like travel, groceries and voting. I anticipate my expulsion from the realm of poetry and still, I suppose myself over and over.

***

Some feel more desirous when they are alone. Some are patiently curious in their longing. With readerly intent, some enjoy peace, even intimacy in solitude. It's delirium for me, alone with my visions. 

I take up nasty arguments with myself to stave off solipsism. Such problems of mind simulate matters of ethical concern. 

For years I thought I had panic attacks. Then the doctor told me I was throwing emotional tantrums. I needed to practice getting a grip.

I'm not interested in information. I'm afraid of my own happiness all laid out like berries in summer. 

Somehow, I still consider myself steady. I'm an efficiency expert, alert to my choices and to leaps in quantum time. 

Now and then I am lovely, lovely, lovely. I am sweet and kind with a clever shard of ice in my heart. They say I'm a kissable fox. They speak it all over my body early in the morning before they go.

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