Monologue So I Can Sleep

It happens too easy, and always
with the right person: such
a marriageable creature.

My proclivity to men hangs
like a shade of pricetags, running my mind
as a sleigh over puddled ice.

Love is slick, obscuring, and mine:
the textbook case of tunnel vision.
Slowly, furtively, he’ll loose

the grommets of my liturgy, all the poems
I want to write. My brain skids back,
the clock goes. A woman on the radio

said loneliness afforded her the time
to learn quilting. Nascent
daughter— I could buy you these

barrettes, my mother tossing them
in the cart— Imagine: saffron
and navy, thumbed herringbone . . .

The importance of one thread.