Grace Willis

Asking why on the White River,
you tell me about the time you tried
to kill yourself, dropping to the side
of a California highway.

Later that night
I’m spitting tobacco juice down the drain,
remembering how I laid crucifix in the grass,
touched it with trembling hands in triumph
at the memory of a near six year drawl
prophesying over me: the grass
           would never be greener.

Known only by the glow of cheap cigars
I tell you why I won’t sing hymns.
You tell me you were in love once.
     I ask myself how to know what it feels like
and why time is a mechanism
                                of middle grade clarity.

The spin and ache of hours draws truth
from history, admissions staining the water
in incantations of suffering. Nicotine
behind my eyes, beneath my tongue
              like a rudder as I say to the sky
I never wanted the grass.

I wanted what is now in front of me:
tall trees casting silhouettes on black water.

My mother taught me how to cook mushrooms.

Don’t

      crowd them

she would say.

It’s quiet in the still frame of air-conditioned mid-July,
in the white-washed walls that smell like fresh paint,
in the echoed hum of five-hundred unfurnished square feet.

While you sleep on a king-sized mattress in the next room
I lay the mushrooms carefully in a pan, two inches apart
so that they do not cry
                    and become waterlogged and grey with proximity.

They sizzle to brown crisps and I wake you gingerly with coffee.
We eat on the floor in the pale light of afternoon.

I cook rice that evening. My mother tried to teach me
how to make each grain full and soft and entact,
                                but I never listened, rushing ahead to a boil and now
each grain is a broken ball of glue, burned black in the bottom of the pan
and in the next room there is a mattress and a cup of cold coffee

                                                                                           and that is all.