9.5.14
I didn't write anything this summer.
Today I'm back in Connecticut and it's 90 degrees,
hot breeze lifts my blue skirt
in the glare of the parking lot,
and I hug my coworker Dre twice just to feel
my breasts pressed against
flat pectoral again.
Three days ago I-75 was shut down
in Campbell County, all lanes,
and the guy with whom I spent all summer not writing
swung the overpacked van off the exit at the last minute.
Down Tennessee forest backroads
with his hand pressed to the bruise on my thigh,
crackly speakerphone conversation about his new apartment
in his new city.
I stared out at the choked trees.
Sudden immense swaths of forest gathered, spun
and tamped under dense nets of leguminous vines.
Kudzu,
he said it was called,
and I felt the word break in me.
I scrambled, then,
for a pen and my blue notebook,
ready to grieve.
