Poem in Waiting
after Aria Aber

Nothing is ever how I imagine it to be. I take to riding
bikes through the same gully. The sky is a corner of night framed

with a litter of stars. We do not look up for long,
consider the time they have spent among other bodies.

Above our heads, a plane sorties every half hour.
My breasts ache while you paint my nails

a bright blue. Adolescent monkeys tumble across the easy grass, needling
ugly milk. I count the days of your coming. Dadi twists

two fingers through a crochet hook,
the yarn bending & unbending. I must change

my life, wrote Sontag, so that I can live it.
This house is full of missing. The terrace lock laced

with rust, my mind always someplace else.
At the general store I weigh two packets of grain by their sides, run my cuticles

along the barcodes, then hold them up to the security cameras, a hand in each
back pocket. I pare the idleness from my mind, decorate photo albums with my want.

I consider consequence. The day full of stagnant air.
The cat I feed stale milk to in the lobby, her hunt

of pigeon meat. Last night’s storm of dust
accumulating like all our shelved lies. With my foot, I toe the wreckage: diaspora

of weeds, sore mango dulled with rot. Even our looking scant.

A slow game of tennis on the TV, beard of fledgling boys, white lines, season of clay.

The fan stutters. Another power cut, a bulb begins
and is gone.

I think back to the room from last year,
the curtains open and forgiving,

the light the same as always.