On My Way to Being an Actual
Perhaps it will happen
when, if ever, I purchase
some square of earth. Or
publish a book. Grow
a child. Cook lamb
for a dinner party. Be recognized
at the grocery store. Or
when, like my parents
before me, I buy
a decorative vase
to display on a shelf only
ever used for what is delicate
and rich. Perhaps then. Yes,
surely then. I am lost
in the bounty of this life. As a child
I thought often of death
from drinking too much water—
strange fact I plucked
from the internet—what we know
we learn somehow. The heart
can drown. There is too much
of a good thing and so much
of everything. I hear the people
are buying couch cushion covers
for their covered couch cushions.
So I do, too. How else to treat
something precious? Braised lamb &
my guests & children moving through
these crowded rooms. Perhaps
now. Yes, surely now—and still
the veined & beating muscle sinking,
sinking like a fist and still my mouth
pressed to the running tap—gulping
wildly, marveling at all this abundance.
KIYOKO REIDY is a writer from East Tennessee. Her poems and nonfiction have been published or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, the Harvard Review, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Colorado with her fiancé and their three dogs.