I wanted to say I don’t belong 
on this alkali flat water deserted. 
Did any of us? Wanted to say
I’ve never been at home, never
at rest in this vast ocean of body
directionless, tidal, moon towed 
at times a lethal force, mercenary
of shifting tectonic plates. 
Wherever we are
we wake to the same sad weather
we created yesterday. 
Recycle the same clumsy blunders.
Thought if we relocated 
rusted artifacts of wreckage
restructured the landscape
flooded over the sun-
bleached bones of rotted failures
we could attract waterbirds 
to teach us a way of being 
whole and useful. Worthy of our space. 
But we could not breathe 
in that salt storm, averted our eyes 
from what demanded more care
than we could afford
closed our hands against insufficient 
wet and abundant cold 
offering snowflakes dry as soda ash.
Embraced only our own bodies 
to hoard what little heat
feldspar hearts could generate.  
We stood so long on that playa
waiting. 
We hardened to white lime pillars. 
No life could grow from us.
But we were lovely out there
luminescent by moon’s light
red veins pulsing litmus blue 
beneath eerily green shells 
so that we appeared
plausible. Like we would not corrode
whatever suffered our touch. 
Like we could bear more loss.
Could still carry the illusion forward.
                        

Again, I climb and round the curves of stair
like Quasimodo, using swollen knuckles 
and tumored elbows to balance 
inequity of titanium in the left knee
versus diseased bone in the right
always schlepping half my weight 
in glass, groceries, or still damp laundry. 
Upstairs, no sanctuary. The air vibrates 
of thwapping chopper blades, snare 
drumming automatic gunfire, sirens, 
tortured screams in foreign accents.
All the violent noise of wars I’ve been 
spared as he relives other lives before 
our Kismet. High-definition mayhem devolves 
 
into clanking swordplay. One-by-one I dangle
shirts on hangers I chose for slim lines 
and sturdy build—hangers he can’t break
when he yanks a clean shirt in his rush—
place them in color-coded order according
to season and day’s duty. Still, I’ll be summoned
when he can’t find the one he wants. 

I am not the one he desires. 
We both know now. 
I cannot find the dharma of this work
serving another, capable, ungrateful. 
Wired to expect woman do for man. 
Trained to co-opt, direct, conduct missions. 
Communications coordinator who won’t. 
Misled, I believed an army career
would foster a partner with more 
personal organization. Pouring red wine 
in the June kitchen, black night backing 
glass makes a mirror of the window. 
I glare into the tight shrunken scowl
of all the angry women who raised me.