Desire

Elizabeth Metzger

It is for you I put the children to bed.

Or, come. I will keep the house awake for you.

The floor is fluttering with tongues.
I step through and you step after me
                                                                     laughing,

these are toys.

                              Isn’t it obvious how we’ve changed?

I have no more use for pure feeling.
You escape directly behind my head.

Little vitrines in the closed museums
not being looked at
                                                 I would die to be their objects.

The children left me.
You say they came.

What could you possibly do for my body
when I am in two

                                                separate rooms,
                                                breathing?

Elizabeth Metzger is the author of Lying In and The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Originally published:
May 19, 2021

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