Conversation About Life, After Life

I stretched out against the sky (as you may have done)
and tried squaring my outline with the many points of stars.
My pattern fit the constellations in a general way, like fingers
to a mitten. I cut the scraps created by the disparity
and kept them in a bag beneath the bed. I had hoped to fashion
a chapeau or vest, and appear as my true self when time allowed.
What was I thinking? I have never been able to sew!
Spring, summer, autumn, winter.... Each year passed like four
wheels carrying a covered wagon. Once, eating a mango
over the sink, I remembered an unbelievably satisfying
conversationalist—we managed every morsel off the bone
with progressively more blunt, more accurate responses, out-
doing each other in a spiral of pleasurable honesty that bribed
conversation beyond and beyond, to its furthest possible
ending place. With each admission, our green canoes went over
another waterfall, coursing closer to each others' hearts.
Which we found, truthfully. They were calm and beautiful
like mountain lakes addressing and reflecting the sky
in endless conversation. Our perfect outlines lay on their skin.

Copyright © 2002 Jessica Greenbaum All rights reserved
from Inventing Difficulty Silverfish Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission