becky’s poem

Habitus

By Becky Olson

I.

The five wild turkeys on the side of the road

at the line between highway and woods,

are the same five birds that my grandfather saw

when he woke up with frost on his bedspread as a boy.

They are the same birds as the robins

my sister saw, but could not name,

before she died. They are the same as the five

naked hatchlings sprouting from my palm.

How can you tell me that the lacy frost blue jay

eating out of my bowl when I begin,

isn’t still watching me from a hole or a crack

in my skin?

II.

Every time I see you, I forget the pouch of flesh

under your chin. I didn’t remember that you were old

or had you lied to me about your diet.

I forgot that your hair is dyed and you have sunspots

I have never seen to the left of your eyes.

That you live in a house you claim I was born in

and a body I was born from,

You tell me

This is your room

Here are the clothes you left

I will give you your favorite foods

I will give you fresh baked bread

I will pull it out of the freezer.

I forgot the touch of bare feet on the carpet in the basement,

the taste of biting my own toe nails,

forgot what I looked like before I could reach the top

of the freezer and find the cigarettes and chips you hide there,

twenty two years ago.

III.

I don’t know what the distance between colors is.

I suspect there is a five hour bus ride between green and brown,

or a 30 minute walk to magenta.

I don’t know how I managed to survive

all this time without eating,

without pulling shredded muscles of birds through my teeth.

I do know that there is only one shade of yellow.

There are bodies found, swollen as the snow melts,

Bodies pulled out of the ice in the same spring

that brings blood to your two lips in November.

There is only one shade of yellow.

That is why aspen trees drop daffodil petals like skin cells.

Why tulips birth golden ash leaves

and the pinks of a sunrise on the coldest day of a year.

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