Lullaby

And your hair like sunset filling the bedroom,
music pouring from a corner, spinning
beneath a colorful, quiet mobile, my back laid flat,
fingers drizzling through air, palm shadows floating
against a wall as your cigarette smoke crawls
through breaks of light, and a soft laugh like
whimper, like soft, soft like love,
and your kneecaps, small and twisting, yellow
circling them and scraping down calves to freedom
while the sky sparkles outside a windy window,
your hands on my legs, warm like fireflies, deft
like vinyl, moving in rhythmic tune, not playing,
just stroking, and a cat calls from the black
fence, your lips moving, sounds forthcoming,
and soon, soon, you'll be telling
me a story.

Katie Bowler

Circles of Place

Meet me in Chattanooga, I said,
but your train became a
bus to Sarasota, and I followed,
distance growing be-
tween the Dog and my
pedal, until I turned around
in Alabama. I drove 283 miles
to hear you play the piano
over the phone (some cabernet-
induced cacophony while I
smoked Camel Lights)
--and smiled--
miles from your voice. You
called from a Los Angeles pay
phone, outside an abandoned
warehouse with a tiled mural
of daisies, in the rain, and I
wrote you a letter from a smoky
bar in New Orleans. I heard a
California freeway behind your
laughter in a friend’s convertible
when wind knotted your hair and
distance ate my
heart. When I saw you
in New Orleans for the first
time, your small black-
soled feet picked to-
ward me, and your arms
slammed around me,
bags clutched in each hand
while my green skirt folded
around your knees.
I drove circles through
Ohio backroads, broken by
damaged bridges, so I could
smoke hash with you in
Cleveland, and love all
night until the bed swung
five feet from the wall
and you cried
when I said that now was
forever but time didn’t
exist. I drove you to
Indiana for forgiveness
from your father
while Sam poured coffee,
her long black hair stringing
through the kitchen where
your father asked me
about politics and love. I walked
seventeen miles in Montréal
so you could throw my
Shelley-quoted ring back to me in the hall-
way of the Victoria
Hospital (and I remembered a
departing train blaring a-
way from different confused non-
love in London’s Victoria
Station years before).
The last time I saw you,
you tipped into my window,
brushing a kiss against
my forehead, and when you dis-
appeared in my rear-
view mirror, I turned a New
Hampshire corner that separated
you from me and you
packed bags for hitch-
hiking across America. In that
mirror, a dream erased
like ripples marring water’s
reflection, and I knew
that forever was a moment
in Cleveland.

Katie Bowler