In Desperate Need of a Prose Poem

I am wire-rimmed. You are a thicket with the spiniest of nettles. I am locked outside a room of unwanting. I am not myself today, Madame. I am a frozen pomegranate, but the seeds are still sweet. And the rind the color of my father’s car. I am lying supine under a neatly rolled linoleum floor of miscommunication with a geometric pattern that matches the lamplight hitting your hair and your lips slightly opened for the taking. Sorry for the lack of definitiveness; I cannot remember my own sister’s name or the shape of my hand on your cheek. Memory once again fails to teach me to leave well-enough alone; in the eye of the storm that is me there is a piece of paper with your name written on it in 0.7mm pencil. I am the lawn chair of my discontent, sitting in the sun of “could be”s and “then again”s. Back to where I started.