One day in the future, love musters in the hungry form
of five bodies in the kitchen. A new batch of lemonade scones
is coming out of the oven and steam billows towards the open window.
There are clouds here. Those great loves are setting the table,
swatting dish towels at each other like siblings singing
new language. My tender selfhood becomes them, this.
One love peels away and hooks my foot with hers,
bridging her ribcage to mine. The hair that begins on her ankle
is a melody her gaze is a melody and the melody drenches us both
as she and I play as newlyweds, unpacking delicate china
plates and complicating old recipes for our great growing loves.
She plays at husband like a harp / like sweet pleasing / like sweet
and solemn solace: a vow. I play at wife and the score
swells in my favour, even if the scones burn, even if
I will never really be their mother
or anyone’s,
my many names will sing
that day in the future
when I play husband
when she loves me with
the howl / the hum
of a wife
when great billows of play gather and stretch
new language
toward home.
~~
Em Humphries is a teacher and writer, currently teaching and writing in London. She is the recipient of the Valeria Dean Burgess Stevens Prize for writing on women and gender. Her work appears in Impossible Archetype, Doghouse Press, and Eyeflash Poetry.
