Pumpkin Belly
Autumn, equilibrium-free night where we both were nervous.
Myself much more so than you.
So we existed together after we turned out the lights.
I was nervous, an overgrown mushroom, you picked me.
You guided my overgrowth.
So in the bedroom that smelled of anxious dust,
I could be something thermal.
And though our bodies eventually warmed into sleep
you were still there next to me in a tank top the color of cream
with bluebirds on it, and some sweatpants that tie at the waist
with a string.
And in the morning I rose to your exhausted eyelashes
and your kiss, you were there.
It’s as if we were the oak trees that stripped our bark bare,
dusted sleep tops with dying leaves.
We died, then were born.
And are now grown enough to walk around
like lovers walk, in public.
And our families accept what we have made because
we have paid for each other.
Our families join and they dine, then the toes of our shoes push through
crushed copper leaves, you gestate.
We run into people on Saturdays, they ask what month you are in.
Knowing when Autumn has ceded to Winter,
and Winter’s been buried as always by Spring,
your pumpkin belly will emerge
fully formed from the vineyard.
by Broc Riblet
Twitter: @ribletwrites
Editor’s Note: The surrealistic imagery elevates the romance in this poem from an ordinary happenstance into a deeply felt emotional life.
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