Personal Ad as Portal
I am out here searching for a something that rhymes with knife. I am sucking her pronoun like a lozenge, turning it in my mouth, gilding my throat, sheathing myself, rife with viscous possibility. Have I said too much already? People are donning ballgowns to vaccinations. After nearly a month, I’ve only ever touched her foot to mine, both of us offering our socked toes across a doorway. Glory holes were recently recommended by public health officials. Beams of light piercing lonely apertures. She likes how much I talk about “portals.” We walk a path, six feet apart, behind a barefoot girl, fresh from the lake, my feet falling into her disappearing footprints. Yes, I am seeking the moon outside my window, but also someone to help me peer between the pines. Before this ad, all I had was a bag of raw brisket between my thighs, driving home from the butcher. That is still all I have; I’m not willing to give it up. Oh, but now: I want a life where I show her the lost mitten that a blackberry vine grew through: straight, sharp as a nail. It is spring, the light lips the green growth. I hack another rhubarb stem with a blade too dull to be quick or clean of strife. I won’ t tell her what I want yet, or that barely any other words rhyme with it.
Shelby Handler is a writer, organizer, and educator living in Seattle on Duwamish land. Recent work has appeared in Poetry, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, among others.
