CW: mentions of homophobic violence
--After Adrienne Rich
Serendipity, I’ll say, if you remember. My hands, slippery from
rainfall, fumbling for something in my bag that might startle you
as it crash-lands. Keys clattering onto pavement, a cliché I
play to keep the rain from sweeping you off the street. My want
of an umbrella, of shelter, of a steamy bubble bath, is more
metaphor than I care to reveal, but I want to leave no more than
I want to abandon my own chilled skin. In your hand, the keys I’ve
turned again and again, days clicking open, letting in the ever
present question of us. Will we meet in the cheese aisle? I’ve asked
myself, envisioning fondue and wine, tremble of candlelight, all
our fears melting in the soul of the moment. I’m thinking of
the song we would make our own, the sheer nakedness of it,
a ballad undressing itself lyric by lyric, its flesh reflected in the
mirror of our eyes. Mornings on the train, the newscasts’
headlines spun through the hands of a supersonic clock. Terrible
catastrophes are quaking our world, I want to say. Stories
of disasters, diseases, death. What, for God’s sake, do you make of
the lesbian lovers in London, assaulted for not giving life
to a kiss? What sick deity cast us as porn stars, our love clad in
lingerie, or naked as rain sliding down a calla lily? I want my
thoughts to lift your chin without the benefit of voice. That time
I offered you a lozenge for your ailing throat and you smiled the
smile of one whose body has forgotten: Prince on stage, knowing
what it means to kiss a woman, our skittish, haphazard hands, “it’s
been fun” scribbled where I´d expected digits. The worse
for wear, I wandered the streets, more intoxicated from love than
beer, wishing for your name upon a cascade of starlight, that
the rock had sent me soaring into your aura and not the much-
rotted pile of litter, whose stench clung to my skin for days. Worse
is the jar I’ve kept like a keepsake, full of pennies, each coin the
face of an opportunity lost when words held their breath, knowing
serendipity might shun me and cease to cross our paths. What
do I know of love? Coffee in a shared corner of a café, the silence it
takes to will one’s soul into the body of another. Love means
a jar of pennies, of which, all these years, no lover has managed to
guess their worth. If, now, you remember, I’ll say I’d rather be
soaked to the bone than live uncertain whether serendipity lied.
You return my keys and I wait, raindrops splashing fro and to.
Serendipity, I’ll say, if you remember. My hands, slippery from
rainfall, fumbling for something in my bag that might startle you
as it crash-lands. Keys clattering onto pavement, a cliché I
play to keep the rain from sweeping you off the street. My want
of an umbrella, of shelter, of a steamy bubble bath, is more
metaphor than I care to reveal, but I want to leave no more than
I want to abandon my own chilled skin. In your hand, the keys I’ve
turned again and again, days clicking open, letting in the ever
present question of us. Will we meet in the cheese aisle? I’ve asked
myself, envisioning fondue and wine, tremble of candlelight, all
our fears melting in the soul of the moment. I’m thinking of
the song we would make our own, the sheer nakedness of it,
a ballad undressing itself lyric by lyric, its flesh reflected in the
mirror of our eyes. Mornings on the train, the newscasts’
headlines spun through the hands of a supersonic clock. Terrible
catastrophes are quaking our world, I want to say. Stories
of disasters, diseases, death. What, for God’s sake, do you make of
the lesbian lovers in London, assaulted for not giving life
to a kiss? What sick deity cast us as porn stars, our love clad in
lingerie, or naked as rain sliding down a calla lily? I want my
thoughts to lift your chin without the benefit of voice. That time
I offered you a lozenge for your ailing throat and you smiled the
smile of one whose body has forgotten: Prince on stage, knowing
what it means to kiss a woman, our skittish, haphazard hands, “it’s
been fun” scribbled where I´d expected digits. The worse
for wear, I wandered the streets, more intoxicated from love than
beer, wishing for your name upon a cascade of starlight, that
the rock had sent me soaring into your aura and not the much-
rotted pile of litter, whose stench clung to my skin for days. Worse
is the jar I’ve kept like a keepsake, full of pennies, each coin the
face of an opportunity lost when words held their breath, knowing
serendipity might shun me and cease to cross our paths. What
do I know of love? Coffee in a shared corner of a café, the silence it
takes to will one’s soul into the body of another. Love means
a jar of pennies, of which, all these years, no lover has managed to
guess their worth. If, now, you remember, I’ll say I’d rather be
soaked to the bone than live uncertain whether serendipity lied.
You return my keys and I wait, raindrops splashing fro and to.
Julie Weiss’s debut chapbook, The Places We Empty, will be published by Kelsay Books in July 2021. Her recent work can be found in Montana Mouthful, Mothers Always Write, and Sheila-Na-Gig. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.