Lately, we can’t agree on anything. The money we put away for our trip to San Francisco is instead being spent remodeling an upstairs, seldom-used bathroom—her idea. Now she wants to replace the refrigerator but there’s nothing wrong with the old one. Most nights, I stay up late drinking. When I go to bed, there’s a king-sized space between us. 

I blame Bolivia. Since Bolivia, things haven’t been the same. Six weeks studying a fungal pathogen that grows on a rare chili pepper—her dissertation. She lived in a tent at 6,000 feet while I stayed in this house, alone. I missed her more than ever while she was gone, but something happened on that trip. Something has changed. She won’t say what—or with whom—and I don’t have the courage to come right out and ask. 

Press the button,
Shift your weight
A mud-caked welcome mat
Beneath the creaking
Crunch of bones

Pass through
Into the suffocation
Of the plastic covered
Everything
Across the finish line
Of crime-scene tape
And wait

I look in the mirror,

And I see my mom.

Her pale blue eyes stare

Back at me.

I see her lines 

Under my own eyes.

I see my own sagging jowls

Mirroring hers.

As I turn in the mirror,

My buttocks jut out 

As hers once did.

I stop dead in my tracks
heading downhill on S. 19th.

There’s a tree that won’t let me pass.
A winter elm, I think, naked

to the January air. It stuns
the blue right out of me.

Its gentle tendrils weave
a lace shawl