Since I have the time

by Kate Arden

Finalist, Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, selected by Yanyi

You were a brick in the river of bricks and I was also a brick
swimming upstream. A brick in the goddamned dam

wall of bricks in the river of bricks and you were just bouncing
the fuck around. All the sentences we were standing on became sand.

Every mouth then full of sand. I was all, You know those thoughts
you get drunk alone in the little mornings aren’t your real thoughts

right? And you were all, Who died and made you my wife?
When you forget me, I hope you forget first what I said that night.

As the sun set I asked, Is this the last time I’ll see you in daylight?
And you answered, Why’d you have to say that?

My memory of you was already dark in spots. Like a going banana.
You fucked me on the kitchen counter before we had cleaned

off dinner’s cutting board. I was wearing just your watch.
God, look at the time. I thought it again, in the doorway, and again

in bed as you hovered over me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like all
the fucking. It was that I knew there was a time when you’d stop.

And then we’d, like, really have to clean the cutting board.
Yeah, you stuck me with a pin and all these pet names

poured out. But I was just trying to be a brick.
You’re fully clothed. Are you mad at me?

Kate Arden is an MFA candidate at the University of Kentucky. She received a BA in English and Political Science from the University of North Carolina. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Cordite Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, and Hole in the Head Review.