Cynthia Hamill

Day 60: Drink

It would be easy. No one would know, or care.

I could walk into the kitchen and open the bottle in the fridge. Is it a pinot grigio? Or a chablis? No matter. I’ll get my favorite glass, a few ice cubes, and give myself a pour that passes for modest.

The oncologist recommends against it. My father’s alcoholism recommends against it. A college friend, who left me a drunk and rambling voicemail, recommends against it.

My face burns, thinking about it. My mouth waters.

I do walk into the kitchen. I fill the kettle, and set it to boil.

Day 59: Cartwheel

The woman is asked if there is a part of her she has lost.

In a moment, it’s defined: a cartwheel.

She’d been a gymnast in her childhood and early teens. She filled every moment with cartwheels, handstands, leaps; there was always some climbing, flipping, or tumbling to be done. She was comfortable upside down. Muscles did what she demanded, and ankles and wrists could be depended upon. Her body had made shapes that felt beautiful.

The woman, who is me, looks down at her calf, her thigh, her shoulder. She traces her skin, recalling the backbend that lived underneath.

Day 58: The Universe

When I shuffle the cards, I
Think/dream/conjecture/feel my question,
Though I know The Universe already hears it,
Already knows my confusions and curiosities.
I make my hands soft, nestling, permissive.

When I cut the cards, they
Break themselves into stacks of information,
Lined up like visitors at a funeral
Each with their own message for the
Living and the dead.

When I lay out the cards, we
Remark upon the first to show its face:
the luscious blue pool with a woman floating inside.
She is The Universe,
Pregnant, amniotic,
Holding my intentions up to the light.

Day 57: Braid

We were kids when we crashed our bikes on the playground. You skinned your knee, and I rode you to my house for band-aids and a Coke.

We’re grown up now. I mean, we’re juniors, and you have your license and all. (But we still have curfew, and my mom will be expecting me.)

Your bedroom is a mix of both. You got rid of that pink wallpaper last year, but stuffed animals still crowd your bed.

“Can you braid my hair?” You ask.

You sit between my legs, your wavy hair in my fingers.

I’m going to be late.

Day 56: Scar

I have a horizontal scar on my breast about an inch long, marking the spot where the surgeon reached in and pulled out a cancerous tumor last year.

I like it. It’s straight and skin colored, not angry, puckered, or jagged. It’s the perfect slot for a pocket square, or a button hole where a man might slip a flower to decorate his lapel. It could be a runway where planes take off, or the top of a bookshelf where my favorite novel lives. It could be a window waiting to be opened, or a sleeping ocean ready to wake.

Day 55: Recipe for Balancing the Fifth Chakra (Throat)

Give it your best shot, at fifty, with
Seventy-four bars of alto octave notes
Ranging from “Blest Be the Lord,” to
“Eyes Without a Face,” and “Unshaken.”
String a lapis crystal around your neck,
Hang it on a wire, hold it between your teeth.
Write a letter, which you then read aloud
For four days straight, to each direction,
Then burn.
Eat blueberries. And seaweed.
Swallow an idea, which then grows a vine of
Words which might explain, if they were only
Said, instead of hummed on the other end of the phone.
Drink. More.
Once again, rise and sing.

Day 54: Safari

My aunt’s memory is failing. We first noticed this two years ago, when she got lost on the way to the grocery store; these days, she can hardly be left alone.

My dad, her impatient and controlling younger brother, is having a hard time with it.

Most recently, they fought when she told him she just returned from Africa. He reminded her, loudly and with considerable frustration, that she’d not left their neighborhood in years.

I’m truly disappointed in him. What sense does it make to argue? She will be gone soon. I want to know what happened in Africa.

Day 53: Fortune Cookie

There’s this guy in my French class, quiet, dark hair, fucking dreamy. Smart, too. He sits in the back and answers Mme. Devlin perfectly every time. Even his accent is pretty.

He came to pick up food at the restaurant tonight. Beef with broccoli, eight egg rolls, hot and sour soup, and enough mu shu pork to feed the offensive line. Pop didn’t see me slip a dozen extra fortune cookies into the bag.

I picture him picking one from the pile. He cracks it and smiles, reading the message from me to him, all the words I’ll never say.

Day 52: Warmth

The day we broke up, I returned your jacket. I emptied the pockets and held it out. You hesitated, then took it from me carefully, so our fingers wouldn’t touch.

I thought of the times you warmed me.

You rubbed my shoulders as we stood in line outside the movie theater. You gave me your sweatshirt at that tailgate party when the wind picked up. You wrapped a blanket around us at the beach, an impromptu tent that kept our heat in when dusk cooled the sand.

We were not good for each other. But you were excellent at that.

Day 51: New

Give to me your mouth.
It fixes me as if with a hammer and nail,
Abruptly, with no denying.
Your tongue polishes my voice,
Your lips fashion a chain clasping your breath to mine.

Give to me your hips.
They push the world,
Grind and level with their insisting sway,
The invisible language of currents
Caught by my hands.

Give to me your hair.
That darkness, that commanding forest
Untethered by ribbon
Is silkened by an exhalation of water over rocks.
Breathing on its own, deciding.

Give to me your elbow, eyebrow, and ear,
Your full throat of gasping bliss.