<div class="line">a gold microfiber couch may not have been the most practical</div>
<div class="line">choice. There’s always a mess <i>somewhere</i> and a five-year-old</div>
<div class="line">everywhere and a leak and a draft and bacon grease and glitter glue</div>
<div class="line">and seriously? During my parents’ first visit from the swamps</div>
<div class="line">of mid-coast Florida and the 100-year flood? Because my timing</div>
<div class="line">has always been wretched and I never go far enough in malady</div>
<div class="line">to merit bed rest and isolation.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Four days prior: <i>This might get you all the way through to menopause</i></div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Because nothing cheers a woman more than a bridge to shrink</div>
<div class="line">the distance between fertility and fallow womb, unless it’s a reasonable</div>
<div class="line">manifestation of Catholic retribution: of course God will punish</div>
<div class="line">me for sexy sex though I supposed his smite would less resemble</div>
<div class="line">a small, copper coil dangling from my cervix and appear more like</div>
<div class="line">brimstone.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line2">Or a flood. Because, really, shouldn’t everyone</div>
<div class="line">in Boulder County suffer for my liberated orgasms, not just</div>
<div class="line">my somewhat flustered 54-year-old boyfriend weathering nasty</div>
<div class="line">texts about vasectomies and speculums and cramps.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Four days to wait to see if the clinic can fit me</div>
<div class="line">in on Friday, and there’s no moral or clever ending. I’m just sad</div>
<div class="line">it will never again make sense for me to want a baby.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BattisteBoulder.mp3"></audio></figure>

Rootbound

Letter to a Tardigrade

Boulder County, September 2012

Arguments About the World

JAZZ by Jéanpaul Ferro

Once More, with Feeling

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">
Ex-boyfriends appear like daffodils<br />
after a slow and stuttering melt. Last<br />
autumn squirrels dug up bulbs, ran off<br />
and buried them in places you’d never<br />
expect to find a fragile boast of spring.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">I’ve forgiven myself for not being much<br />
of a gardener, resenting the maintenance<br />
of dirt, but when I spot errant blooms by<br />
the yield sign at the curb or beneath the dying<br />
oak that, I swear, this season I will put out<br />
of its misery, I admit, this is not what I<br />
intended.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">                        You’d think I wouldn’t be wounded,<br />
thirty one and not all that good at monogamy,<br />
crossing paths with the ones who strayed.<br />
Greg, outside of Philly, looking like Ed Norton<br />
seven years after the final scene. Mark,<br />
in my doorway, asking for a place to crash<br />
on his way to the city where he left me.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">                                                                            It’s<br />
hard not to confuse my affection for them now<br />
with my desperate, perfected love for who I was<br />
then. Hard, not to want to dig beneath roots,<br />
lift them up, claim them. The daffodil beneath<br />
the oak is ridiculous. I have a spade. The earth<br />
has softened.</p>


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June 8, 2011Once More, with FeelingMichele Battiste

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June 8, 2011Once More, with FeelingMichele Battiste

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Boulder County, September 2012 by Michele Battiste

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