The house shuddered all day, trying to cast
me out, but I would not abandon.
The wind, ravenous gusts, arrived in gasps
through chinks in the plaster, rattled doorjambs,
spit snow-shards on channels of glare ice.
A whole geography took shape in a king bed,
vast continent of quilt where we played nice,
turned and hugged the coasts. Caught in a net
of half-truths I thrashed like a landlocked
panfish slick with perilous hunger
and the story paid out its unseen line, thoughts
unwinding in dark sheets, phantom lover
like a barb in the gills, rasping ruin
me take me sink me in the water again.
DIANA WHITNEY's s first book, Wanting It, became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. She’s the poetry columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and blogs about the darker side of motherhood for The Huffington Post. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Boston Globe, Crab Orchard Review, The Rumpus, Salon, The Washington Post, and many more. Her irreverent parenting column, Spilt Milk, was syndicated for years and is currently morphing into a memoir.Diana runs a small yoga studio in Brattleboro, VT, where she lives with her family and 13 chickens. www.diana-whitney.com.
