Soon the Solstice
June 7, 2021
Today the dawn comes furtively.
For once, the sun is not a show-off,
prancing through the clouds.
I’m out running—for pleasure, exercise,
“stress management.” Everywhere
dump trucks are dumping. Of course—
it’s Monday! Pizza boxes by the
dozen, baptized in grease, piled in an
alleyway the sun can’t seem to reach.
I favor shade, gutters dripping yesterday’s
rain. Still running, and somewhere,
a street sweeper whooshing, bristles
on brick. White canopies already assembled
on the beach—a tournament or something.
Expect whistles and clipboards galore.
Shabby Hotel Sheldon with its misshapen
doors, though Haagen-Dazs beckons from
the lobby. Oh, that hard chocolate shell
slipping away, vanilla ache at the center!
Is slow running better than so-called “power-
walking”? For the heart, I mean? Joints are
always a problem, impact always bad for the
knees. It’s not even 7 AM, and now this sky
is egg-yolk golden, clouds shaped like toast,
wind sweeping in for a scramble. Here, a juvenile
heron gangles. There, a bearded man tweaks
his tele-foto lens. The reek of weed: old friend,
hybrid of skunk and sage. And look, two cruise
ships at it again, hustling the distant horizon.
Cooling down now, hands on head, jiggly-legged
and well-endorphined. I check the signboard.
Wanted: Friend to play pickleball. Wanted:
Trustworthy tomato-picker, smoothie-maker, bilingual
bartender, janitor for graveyard shift. Wanted:
Someone to feed fat, entitled tabby—“Miss Creamsicle Moonpie”—
and rub her belly while we’re gone.
Because Other People Die, We Decide to Make a Will
For Angie
/But we won’t, I say, unlocking the car— won’t die—& she agrees, pledges faux-dramatically hand over heart before fastening her seatbelt on the passenger side/
/There was that part in our wedding vows about death & what it could do to us—but that’s just formality, we insist, just an old-timey way of talking about forever—like how they used to call a female will-writer a testatrix instead of a testator/
/We laugh at the stoplight thinking of the plural of testatrix, which must be…testatrices!—/
/Clearly, no one imagined a will jointly written by two women sharing wasabi peas in a two-door they own together, talking in the subtle purple gleam of early night about the will they will make but won’t believe in because they will themselves alive together every day & won’t stop willing—/
/Fates willing, Furies willing/
/First, there’s the right turn, then the left turn, there’s somebody honking, there’s somebody in the crosswalk, there’s the blinker & the brake too hard & the stories they tell each other while stuck in traffic, since love is always a kind of limbo/
/Though it’s purely testamentary, this document we’ll sign— like elementary, dearly beloved of mine—one essential bequeathing, one over-&-done that we will but we won’t, no we can’t, though we could—/
/Her hand on my thigh pulsing heat & light as I park this car, our lives, so provisional, between the two white lines/
Psalm for All the People Sitting in Their Cars
Idling is so much softer
these days. The Prius
doesn’t peep. The
Honda doesn’t hum.
But you’re in there—
I see you—
temperature-controlled
while texting and tweeting,
talking on your Bluetooth,
hands free from even the
steering wheel now.
You wave them around,
your hands, just the way
you would if someone
were perched beside
you on the passenger seat.
Sometimes someone is.
We do this, we humans,
talking with more than just
our mouths. We talk to
people who are there and
people who are not there
but once were or never were.
Passersby assume it’s
Bluetooth. Let them assume.
Some of your kids are sleeping
in car seats or slumped over
on the backseat in their
baseball jerseys, their
sprawling limbs and
sugar comas.
Maybe they’re finicky
sleepers most of the time,
and nothing knocks them
out quite like a car ride. Still,
you know if you take them
home, they’ll wake up the
moment you open the door.
Some of your kids are watching
Frozen for the four-hundredth
time on the little TV inside
the mini-van. But you control
the volume. You bought the
Bose noise-cancelling head-
phones for a reason. You’re
slipping them over your ears
right now.
Maybe you’re eating lunch,
or sipping coffee,
or charging your phone,
Power-Point-prepping
or power-napping,
arranging roses you just
bought at the drugstore
hoping you can make them
look like roses you bought
anywhere but at the drugstore.
Maybe you’re writing
a love letter or a eulogy
or a resignation or a story
you’re afraid no one is
ever going to read.
You have the stamps
in your cup holder,
but you aren’t going
send it out, are you?
No, I think you’ll keep it,
whatever it is, in the glove
box with the insurance and
the registration cards, where
there used to be maps,
remember? Where now,
there seldom are.
Maybe you’re nervous
about the date, the interview,
the first day at the new
job, or quitting smoking,
which you’ve tried
to stop doing in this car.
It’s tricky, like all habitual
things, all nostalgic things,
are. There’s even a dent on
the dashboard from all
the times you’ve
struck a fresh box hard.
I watch your window crack,
your lighter flash; I’m not judging.
Or maybe you’re done with
this day, but you’re just not
quite ready to face the nightfall.
You have groceries in the trunk,
but you bring your own bags,
some with insulation
for the cold stuff. Greener,
sure, but also less reason to rush.
If you check your messages now,
you’re thinking how you won’t
have to check them later—
though you will. Screen time.
Family time. Your spouse
snapping, Put it on silent!
What kind of example
are you setting for the kids?
Or maybe you just plain love
the group chat but don’t
want to wreck on the road.
Strangers and neighbors alike
thank you for not texting
and driving.
Do you remember the way
we used to stay in the car
every time Celine Dion sang
“My Heart Will Go On”?
It was the ‘90s. It’s tempting
to say it was a simpler time,
though it probably wasn’t.
That’s just the rearview talking.
Please, no apologies—
for all the time you haven’t
been on the road,
haven’t been in the store,
haven’t been doing, doing,
going, going. Maybe you just
wanted some quiet time,
a place to breathe without
your breath slamming so
hard inside your chest.
Maybe you just needed
a place to cry.
I see your little pine tree
or tassel dangling. I see
your dome light or your
phone aglow in the otherwise
deep pocket of parking lot
dark. Sometimes I hear your
music rippling out,
the car’s exhaust, less
now than before,
and your exhaustion,
now more than ever.
You might see me too,
my tiny notebook dotted
with pineapples, my Warren
for President sticker stuck
over my Yes We Can sticker
because I don’t know for
sure if we can anymore,
but I still want to
believe we can.
Yes, that’s me, waving to you.
Where did you think I was
writing this poem?
Julie Marie Wade writes and publishes poetry, prose, and hybrid forms. Her most recent and forthcoming collections include The Mary Years (Texas Review Press, 2024), selected by Michael Martone for the 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, Quick Change Artist: Poems (Anhinga Press, 2025), selected by Octavio Quintanilla for the 2023 Anhinga Prize in Poetry, and The Latest: 20 Ghazals for 2020 (Harbor Editions, 2025), co-authored with Denise Duhamel. A finalist for the National Poetry Series and a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, Wade teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami and makes her home with Angie Griffin and their two cats in Dania Beach.