On the phone, you keep your voice
distant, flat, a map of my sins
as we discuss visitation and grades.
I tip-toe over your words
afraid to set off hidden land mines.

I think of the morning dawn spilled orange
into the sky as you held my hand
and my body, locked in waves of pushing
opened like a mouth and sang out our child.
I thought we agreed to protect her.

My name is a bag of rocks you carry around
to the grocery store, the laundry mat.

The day I left you for good,
both of us mouthing words that would not stick,
approaching the airline gate,
we stumbled like two dumb cows
side by side, followed the carpet
just like the day we married.



�2006 by Kerri Rochelle