Alison Petrash-Hall

A selection of love poems, from the early days of my relationship with my wife to years into our marriage, in no particular order.

I Already Knew You

Burrowed in the valley between

neck and shoulder, in simulated nighttime,

your flesh surrounding my face and shoulders

with the steady heat of summer.

I can hear the crickets, see the

amicably rippling pond, the grass wet and high.

I was watched those nights

through the billion holes pricked in the sky,

by the moon’s drunk face,

and knew it was impossible to die then, that

everything slept and would wait until tomorrow.

Pulling back into the bedroom light,

the pink, sun baked sandstone of your skin

flecked with pebbles, the rift of your lips,

squeezing between to an unknowable

system of caves, crevices too tight for my

head and hips, but I feel their panting.

I’ve known you before, and

always went to you for answers.

–

Too Stupid

Yesterday you told me there was
another school shooting, in my hometown.
The din seems to be
closing in on us, breaching the membrane
from nightmare to consciousness,
but each day I’m less afraid.

During our drive home you told me
about a passage you read, which said
we are too stupid about each other,
too busy having sex, and writing poems,
and savoring every text
to save the world.

–

Bread & Butter

Don’t split the pole, I say,
threading our fingers together and
maneuvering to your side
of the stop sign.

Bread and butter, I say to myself—
the way I’m spread across
your bare, freckle-sprinkled back
in our bed.

A universe conspires to
tear us to pieces, reducing the shapes
we make beneath the sheets to
atomic ingredients, stealing
bigger ones every year,
under our noses.

Every day is obstacles and partings,
a long wall that obscures you from
my view until we find the
fragile gaps, and wait there
as long as we can.

Quit your job, you joke,
covering me with your body, and
quit yours, I challenge back.

My new life’s work is
packing a bag to run away with you,
becoming two interlocking continents
on a bald blue end of earth
where the fruit grows juicer.

–

Smoke

Last night, words exhausted,
I watched for half an hour as
you lay naked on your back
in the radiating lamplight.

With every microscopic movement
I ached for something else—
an emptiness that attacked me
from different angles.

The focus of my appetite
shifting like the fine hair
of your skin in the raw air.

You cast shadows
across your face with an
upraised elbow, and your dark eyes
burned at me through the shade.

There’s a wildfire raging
inside me, too—setting
old growth fears aflame and
hollowing space for you.

We’ll collide in the smoke
like leaping deer and
house each other soon.

–

I don’t want that; I want you

You touch my leg across the console
and say “Please don’t move to Slab City.”
Sometimes I wish I never told you,
never gave you new fears.
I was only googling what to do
If I didn’t die before you.

Your arms, they keep me
from falling into this street.
Your hands stop me from
cutting the string, weather balloons
taking me, spinning past atmosphere
and hanging there, freezing.

My therapist warns me about
codependency, and I wonder how
anyone avoids drowning in this world
without clinging to someone buoyant
until they have the strength to swim,
until they can keep wanting to.

Sometimes I peer into that
quantum box, just my body
in our bed, and I can’t text you
about how dark it is this morning
or thank you for walking the dog,
and I know I need to make plans.

I’m learning to honor myself
in spite of knowing how much better
and less mechanical my life became,
moving less like an animal, and I’m
trying to fall back in love with this
hostile planet, in case I’m left with it.

Until then, never stop surprising me
and never stop upsetting me and
never stop opening to me in ways
too creative for me to think of,
as if you made all this yourself,
as if you were god all along.

–

Becoming

When I tunnel into your eyes through mine,
I recognize love, and become it.
Sloshing lake, meniscus rising like bread
and sighing open under rainfall;
rabid, stamping, slumbering,
purring with pleasure at the contradiction,
apologizing with open palms;
kissing for the first time, the five-hundredth time, straight As,
hefty discount and exact change;
oxygen in airlock, blood transfusion,
fat that cushions bones,
waking and realizing it’s Saturday;
last year, and three hours ago,
and now, yes even then, and even if;
bowling pin bolted to the floor,
piano that came with the house,
load bearing wall and protected species;
planet and moon dancing, universe
bumping against the shores of gravity,
contracting, booming and blooming
all over again.

–

Red

I remembered hues I’ve
never seen, only discussed
in clipped dreams between
me and myself.

I understand now,
from the vibrations she
mouthed, too loud to hear.

The girl in me was there,
plain, patient,
insistent, pushing me
from my orbit
with both hands and
closing the gap between
satellites until our signals met,
too tired to be distressed.

I bloom in my guts, red,
the deepest parts of me
grown wild for you,
cracking open vases,
seeds hurtling to the dirt.

You’ve unfastened
the animal, aching
with loyalty,
galloping to your garden.

And your lips—red,
the better for me
to see you.

–

Marriage

We are domesticated, and I say that
with nothing resembling regret.
You know we are silly animals in captivity,
bothered by the wind hitting us a certain way.
I hope, forever, you don’t mind my searching,
my turning of every rock under sunlight
and foraging for the closest thing to sense,
for objects you’ve already found and hold
close to your chest, knowing like a parent.

–

Never Forever

We’re across from each other at the diner
eating bottomless fries,
and I’m drinking a beer so big,
like something from a cartoon.

I put a hundred candles on a birthday cake.
and we watched them melt one after the other,
the flame too tall to blow out.