Mudhill - as part of the Fading Spaces Project

Don’t teach me
While I get home from work
While I put the tea on to boil
While I feed the cats
(I’ve been giving one of them medicine for a week because he has a lot of stomach acid, he has difficulty swallowing
Back)
While I water the roof garden
That you built for me as a love gift
But now my white pants will be muddy from the hose
But I watch the lotuses (which, I know, are lilies), because I said they are living symbols of our renewed
Relationship
(While they grow slowly)
While I watch a nighttime art film on public television
Until it gets dark
Until I turn on the light
While I move more and more boldly in the fading space of our shared life
While I dine on cheese and homegrown tomatoes,
I can’t get rid of the thought
That with the same fervor,
The same at an angle,
you pierce yourself into him with the same desire
as you once did into me.
“Don’t teach me to live without you,” said a lover I left when we broke up
and I’ve been living without you for five months now.