Last night while watering the garden,
 
I mistakenly elbowed a yellow jacket

or perhaps it was a carpenter bee 
casually bathing in a galaxy
of purple astor. And then, as if

taking the Circle Train home,

we accordioned together vaudeville-style —
our physical margins shaken
by the surface of bright lies.

And through the torn sleeve

of my sweater, I felt the stinger 
insert until you stumbled, slow-motion, 
into the flowerpot; inert like a lover

who has overexerted himself,

then lies down in the gold husk  
of a late July night. 
Now all that remains of us is a raised scar,

burning like a silver dollar —

swiftly seen-to with wet tea bags and copper pennies —
the way we tried to exorcise the toxins 
from our lives: a blue basin next to the crib

of a sick infant or a vacuum cleaner hung,

then ignored, in the guest room closet.  
When you left, I didn’t recognize myself in the drapes.
I took down all the mirrors
 
from the walls, subsisting on huckleberries

and the machinery of my heart
which came as a continuous surprise —
the new knowledge that
 
my body could outlast death —

could heal this deep, sharp sting.

    Susan Rich is our poet in residence for May. 


    Previously: Present Tense: Seattle, Profiled, The Scare Crow, and Map of the London Underground Painted on a Miniature Cocktail Tray.