~ALISON STINE~

MARRIAGE

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On the table where I take
my meals, there is a bowl
of stones, blue as teeth. 
One is cleaved exactly though
I cannot find its other half,
river-smooth, white-struck—
a pestle, or hatchet’s perfect
head.  I can make up the story:
two fields needed a divider. 
So it was granite, wedged with
wood and hammer, a wall left
to winter.  Cold contracts—
the plank floor, door frame,
even the mineral heart. 
You must have known this;
you returned to her.  I am not
a woman of substance.  I look
back and you lie there, naked,
the city in ruins.  My body
dissolved like grains.

 

© by Alison Stine