Sally Delehant

Love Poem

My feet are cold
under an electric blanket

and a sunburn wilts
my wintertime.

In the privacy of our bed
we talk about humans

as cilia—
alive tendrils

extended from a cell
that is planet Earth.

And it’s propitious
to be a twisting glob

next to you even though
we met at a bar. Maybe

our souls have been
entwined for eons—

circling each other like
we do. You are my love

but used to be my mom,
my pastor, my son.

The sidewalk of time
leads nowhere.

I can’t act like I’m not
having my picture taken

and my nervousness
feels like you now.

In states that end in A
my friends have babies

while I cry like
the youngest child

anywhere. I might write
one hundred years.

Tonight I put tea tree oil
on your scars and felt

old when I didn’t let you
blare music in my car.

You touch all my things.
I sign your name

on papers and you
agree with me.

This arrangement—
a home

for my roaming yield.

Here’s a flower.
Here’s uppercase.

Sally Delehant is the author of A Real Time of It (Cultural Society, 2012). Her poems appear in Hidden City Quarterly, Pinwheel, ONandOnScreen, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.