Nicole Rollender
WISH
I.
Sometimes in the darkness of myself
I wake up homesick.
Then someone turns on a lamp. She follows
the long hallway between the ripening now
and all the hours of my before-life.
She barely makes a sound. I wouldn't know
she was there except for the soft tread
of her feet as she begins to climb
the stairs, each step a drop
into my deep bucket of waiting, wanting.
Sometimes like a tree bending toward
the earth's rim, I bend
to tomorrow and next year,
trying to hear what I'll say when
someone asks: How did you learn
loneliness is useful?
No one wants to be loved more than me.
II.
Tossing old pennies into the mule barge canal,
we each made a separate, secret wish.
III.
I haven't learned to live with hunger.
Yet, I've let it carry me.
If you asked me what I should wait
for, there would be no clear answer.
My face in the glass says: peace.
The rustlings inside say nothing.
They are looking for a landscape to fly over.
Someone must plant trees, bushes. Someone must pick
up her shears and prune one branch at a time.
IV.
You left a bowl of lentil soup on the counter. A single
sunflower head sprouts from a blue bottle. The light crosses
our kitchen and blesses each object, leaving nothing behind.
V.
Sometimes, letting loneliness turn to solitude,
it's unbearable, bone-breaking.
My wish was for the heart to slow,
savoring the simplicity of words: fountain, clock,
water, stone, oleander, bells, rosemary, blood.
VI.
If I were wise, I would say:
When the world forgets my face.
it's better for me,
that I go nameless, quietly,
into what I fear most,
being forgotten.
My name doesn't need to be said aloud.
VII.
A bird outside breaks into chatter,
as if to assert, Every life shatters. Every
bone will be washed clean.
VIII.
This remaining touch, this last word, wish — so fragile,
and yet, here we are.
FILLING THE BODY
A bit of winter left in the air,
you stumble in with the groceries.
A bag of onions breaks open, dropping
its load onto the floor. This is enough
to make you weep. Every leaving
is like this. Consider this tomato,
a lumpy, mottled fruit waiting on
the cutting board. So like a heart,
not evenly ripe, a little bruised, ready
to be diced. Here's an eggplant — search
its purple firmness, its deceptively prickly
star of leaves — and cut it into thin haloes
of parchment flesh. Your hands take apart
what the earth has yielded. What does this
make you? An un-creator? You say what
you feel is loss, that it's you needing
to be filled. So, cradle this zucchini from
your lover's garden. Feel its weight,
weight like blessing, also stone. (What
he gives costs: a piece of the heart.)
What you need to hear is you are loved,
you are held in the breath of the world.
Your heart's caught in this vegetable
grasp: Pour olive oil, its slow, golden
drip, over the water-washed tomato, eggplant,
zucchini, as close to you now as your
own body. Believe this — your life, slowly,
will ripen. Otherwise, to live as simply
as you could, you'd have to forget everything.
Nicole Rollender is editor of two monthly magazines, and has a master of fine arts degree from Penn State University.