Where are you

Poetry

Nadia Dasi Tamayo

At the heels of a fight spilling over, 

a cat might hold in its paws unspoken words which 

if kept warm, might never leave. 

Maybe in the space of waiting between the steel pot 

and kitchen window, I want you to parcel me together, 

to make a gift out of my animal body which even in anger 

is yours. To forget my hunger I remind myself 

I wanted to do something for you 

while you waited, curved in a chair. 

The one time a stove called out in its small voice to me, 

did you ever watch? Or were you just watching your hands 

empty out 

some thick feeling? Something you wanted to stay 

soaking like loquat syrup in your throat will not 

make it out alive because maybe 

you know better. 

I don’t know where you are in that body 

but I tell myself things I do know. Helplessness was not inside  

us when we grew slow in sleeping together. I search 

for you in all my unrelated thoughts about anything 

and in abridged silence, you arrive at my feet. 

You are a me flavoring thing, and from you I want everything. 

Out of the water, I minnow for smaller realizations of knowing 

when we wanted each other 

and compare them to times that happen closer to now. I ask twice. 

How sure are you that this is love and not obsession?  

Surely you would be tired of this by now, but you say there is no way to tell 

if I can only trust you in loving me. I linger in this thought 

when your body is too close and warm for me to remember 

what we even argued about.