On the First Day of the Year, I Try to Write You A Love Poem after We Drink Until 5 AM
Kitchen floor cigarettes light into the New Year like birthday candles–
the windows above us fog with our capillaries oxygenating in unison.
Sometimes I am so afraid of my heart leaping out onto the floor.
Sometimes, I am trying to write you a love poem.
Sometimes, I feel like I am not writing at all.
The tree outside your window has cycled it’s leaves.
It watches the birds on it’s branches get drunk,
sunrises, sunsets — birds become moths,
become butterflies, depending on the time of the day. You curl
arms around me, cocoon me.
Sometimes, I think about the tequila
on your balcony in the middle of the morning,
chamucos stare from the bottle as we drank,
as smoke rose
from our faces towards the stars. Did they see
your open mouthed smile, your hand on mine.
Did they see this poem being written?
I am trying to write you a love poem
in the same way you feed me spoonfuls of ice cream,
open the door, hold my hands to dance,
listen to your heart as we fall to sleep. Sometimes,
I wake up to your body as it becomes
moth, becomes butterfly before seven AM,
before I leave for work, before I kiss your forehead.
Sometimes, I hold still
and wait a little longer.
This is mom calling: kill me
Broken bread, apple slices, honey or maple syrup
mash in a box in the fridge. Polaroids of the injury.
Triangles stamped into her forehead.
Before me, she lost the baby.
Before me, her mother.
Before me, a tomato plant.
A row of cotton.
An old mobile-home down the street from the church
she was baptized in.
Her tongue a cut phone cord—
a white haired exit.
In every album, she cuts out shapes of me:
scrunchies, rubber ducks, candied hearts.
I thrift for the skirts she stopped wearing
while I was alive. VHS static
before me. Gray screen visions.
A cycle of peekaboo under all of the tinsel
home movies. Fake snow on windows,
a spray-can of silly string and all of the restless nights
undercover listening for footsteps.
The sound of a car engine running,
a muffled ring of keys, shadowed
bent knees under door-crack.
Held breath. Still bodies
listening, returning.
Margarita Cruz received her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. She is president of the Northern Arizona Book Festival and coordinates events for her local bookstore. She has received support from the Tin House Writer’s Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Macondo and others. Her works have been featured in Rattle, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and the Academy of American Poets Poem a Day series among others. Find more of her at shortendings.com.