Poem for My Wife Younger

Your father the union steward just starting to weld, your mother working the 2nd shift at the plastics plant. They had not even met when I was born in Bellevue afewfloors from the lunatics decades later I almost envy

for to live this life is to cage the hurt we carry to give it shape the scars in our skin unseen as the rain falls and you are asleep and the roof ’s music the snore of the dark in your slight breathing saws me. When you firstsawme you said you wanted me to never be unseen and then the years of wreckage the empty bottles and the booze the fitfulalterations of the rain restitching the dark’s fabric wind bowing the dogwoods and the pines creaking in the storm shaking the rusted steel shed where we still keep your father’s tools sharp enough to cut the dark the steady downpour of the dead. There is nothing more to say except when I was born there was a vacancy like an empty room inside my chest

like the spaces between the rain. For years when I was falling forward I could feel you there in the absence of the air.

Julia Bonadies

Second shift at the garden center

the Wednesday before school starts and summer has been so shitty, I almost ask Sean for a cigarette as he rants about his ex-girlfriend. I’d probably be dead by now if I’d stayed

he says as he shifts his head between slumped shoulders clothed in neon-safety yellow, faded and stained from motor oil, metal polish, and freshly cut grass.

His hands punctuate the air as he gestures to the downpour outside the greenhouse, tells me how he uses barometric pressure, air temps, and wind speed to predict weather. I think I’d like to audit classes one day. You know, like, Philosophy or Psychology. I love learning. Always did better when I learned something, just never did good in school.

I listen to the soundtrack of Sean’s dreams drift up from the yard, take shape from behind the wheel of the skid-steer loader while he chain smokes and wonder who let him believe he couldn’t be more than a chimney sweep, an air vent vacuumer, mower mechanic, warehouse worker, hardscaper with a bent back and chafed hands.