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by Kate Ellen Braverman
I teach fourth grade batik and weave plant hangers with seashells bound in the yarns, pine cones and stones glassy from waves and age. I make ceramic vases and cups, bake breads, dance and read books. Last summer I hiked forty-seven miles alone in the High Sierras. I do not smoke or take drugs. I have lived four years in a cottage on a hill. My windows face the sky. I am responsible.
Painters have shared my bed, stockbrokers and psychologists. All are strangers, sleeping encased in sheet strange unreachable mounds fearful I will touch their dreams. They close doors while they piss and decline my shower. Breakfast finds them angry staring at a black well of coffee complaining my cats bit their toes, restless, wanting to change their underwear. Winding watches. Bound to other things.
I want to love a blue-eyed man and have blue-eyed babies, sleek and smooth as cats. And a yard perhaps, to grow spices and flowers. I am twenty-six I embroider, I sing. I am punctual and clean.
