perhappened mag
issue 15: DISGUISE
allow me to treasure
these slips of the eye,
LEILA WALKER
the way a red grape tucked
in the pimpled skin of a blood orange
on the sidewalk after a rain
resembles the taut belly of a fetal
bird nestled in its own naked
wings, the way
a bicycle tread in a mudslick
leaves a pattern like a spine, knotted
with vertebrae
and curved with labor, the way
a London Planetree thickens and pools
at the base as if, like stained
glass, it could melt, the way
a marriage stretched across the skin
of years softens to take shape,
the way the bodies of two women bend
together at the cusp, as if reading, as if
in prayer, as if in age,
the way I stand here in the pollinated
morning light, tucking your nightgown
behind the pillowcase
to smooth the bed, the way I fail,
every time, to recollect
what it was we found, and what
we made of it.
in the pimpled skin of a blood orange
on the sidewalk after a rain
resembles the taut belly of a fetal
bird nestled in its own naked
wings, the way
a bicycle tread in a mudslick
leaves a pattern like a spine, knotted
with vertebrae
and curved with labor, the way
a London Planetree thickens and pools
at the base as if, like stained
glass, it could melt, the way
a marriage stretched across the skin
of years softens to take shape,
the way the bodies of two women bend
together at the cusp, as if reading, as if
in prayer, as if in age,
the way I stand here in the pollinated
morning light, tucking your nightgown
behind the pillowcase
to smooth the bed, the way I fail,
every time, to recollect
what it was we found, and what
we made of it.
Leila Walker is a queer New Yorker and assistant professor at Queens College. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in McSweeney’s, Hypnerotozinia Polyphony, Synapse, The Gallatin Review, and perhappened.