On New Year’s Eve, mom and I booked a place

downtown. She wore a mollusk-colored dress, open

at the back, and heels she knew she could move 

in. Our dinner plans were too early—we had to stall 

so we could mark the hour with champagne fizz. 

We sucked on oysters shipped from a distant sea.

♦

In Ohio, you’re a full day’s drive from the nearest sea.

Growing up, the Great Lakes were an exotic place—

three hours, as far as my family could drive without fist-

fights in the back seat, mom cranking the window open

and chucking out the Hot Wheels car my brothers and I all wanted.

Nothing left to fight over. Her signature move.

♦

Lately I’ve been watching my life like it’s a movie 

that a neighbor is playing with the curtains wide; I see 

blue light & the movement of fight scenes, that’s all. 

None of this is happening to me, I have no place 

in this film. My neighbor has left the drapes open 

again—another poor actress at the business end of a fist.

♦

In my house, it was the women who put their fists 

into drywall, who slammed doors and moved 

through hallways like wild horses. At 13, I had only to open 

my glossy mouth to set us off. Even now I never see 

it coming—the toss of the head, the breakneck pace. 

I used to think she was the only mad stallion in the stall.

♦

I will not be a mother. Certain friends tell me to stall, 

too soon to decide. They cannot see that I have a fist 

for a womb. I know I am missing a safe, warm place 

inside. Where do I fit, a woman who does not simply move 

against the current, but drifts out to her own empty sea? 

Pull me back from the lonely gush, from the wide open.

♦

There were years when our relationship hinged open. 

In these years, I took our fury and swallowed it all.  

(Even in Ohio, oysters taste like the wide, blank sea.) 

I was young when I understood that words can be fists 

and I could either learn to dodge, weave, and move, 

or else I could disappear, send a glossy decoy in my place.

♦

Perhaps my place in this world is trying to move 

toward me—if I stand stock still and pray to be seen 

a door will open like a fist, or an apology.

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