tags: libby burton
Those goddamn lonely moments when I address him in the orchard
of his blue eyes, I ask him to tell me one unwholesome thing, and he
deflects. I remember being the only one watching moon color clinging
to the shoreline (white hairs flat against my legs). Somehow I knew what
to notice about the heat of summer crouching in corners, and there I found
a good and satisfying fear. His rugged forehead taught me to be incandescent
with the promise of exception. And still I wish to speak some loose sentence
in the orchard, in the office, in the gliding car: What is love? Is it piston motion?
Is love a warm and quiet mouth? So I have inherited his tiny throat, squeezing food
like a fist. Now home could be a folding of wings, some calculated sentiment.
I remember his hands holding a map like smoke, my body strapped in the backseat
becoming the shape of a girl, becoming the shape of a spare and exceptional girl.
-Libby Burton, "Dreaming the Places My Father’s Tongue Has Been In Summer"
