A week from December comes white rain bucketed, gathered
to sludge on the doorstep. I bring it in with bottles.
One-time-date calls me to ask for another. I’m in my milk-basin rolling
half circles with my tailbone, yelling into the phone I am not ready yet, I’m not
ready. Hair slithers down my back. It’s as ready as I’ll ever be.

It’s a close-kept secret. I cry for him in the evening. Close-quartered
soldier, uniform picked clean on my pink carpet while he sits
at the foot of my bed, straddling the iron rail, testing the metal integrity
and asking about how few books I own, if I am really
a writer, or if is this a pilgrimage, transient autumn, something new to do.

Sometimes I know I can be a keshi pearl at auction. Sometimes I know
the water inside me came from a gulf. I’d make a terrible fish—
dry and meaty, lard-stuffed with algae eyes still
searching, cheap meal at a beach shack in Jupiter
where a friend discusses her impending marriage, bred python wrapped
in white weeds, white rain. A thrown petal to bruise the cheek.
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I ask my soldier what kind of dowry he expects. A pig, three full-fleece
sheep, a husk of seeds to fling from the window when a new
storm swings the coast to plummet. He requests
a loose gun. And I know he means loose
when he puts it in my mouth to play.
I get the Glock polymer between my teeth, make marks and tug
like a curled-rope toy. I’d be a good dog to put down
on the dairy farm. I would go quietly if I were asked.