Last night I wrote a poem between the scars
on your body like sketching light
between what was once pain
and when I was done I signed my name
on your thigh—Autographed Copy
—I thought, but at this point you were
asleep and dreaming of another artist,
someone’s hands on your body
or maybe, because I heard your stomach
rumble, when I was writing my favorite couplet
about the constellations of you
across your abdomen, maybe your dream
had descended into our kitchen
to the plate of scrambled eggs
with the green onions, and when you went
to grab a napkin, you realized it was covered
in the pen marks of possible titles,
and you wondered how could you wipe
your face without a lightning bolt of blue
across your lips and this is when I love you
most—when you are covered in my smeared
words and when I fell asleep beside you,
I tried to enter your dream by knocking
on the kitchen window—don’t wake up,
I have strawberries I picked from our garden,
I am holding the three stars we always talk about
and they are not even burning my palm.
Kelli Russell Agodon is a poet, writer, editor, book designer, and cofounder of Two Sylvias Press living in the Seattle area. Her most recent book, Hourglass Museum, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize. Her second book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room won Foreword Indies Book of the Year Prize for poetry. She coauthored The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice with poet Martha Silano and is the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast. Her next collection of poems is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.
Image: “A Conversation with Time” by Ronda Piszk Broatch
Pine Hills Review 