There’s a script that was set to type,
that the line of your leg should never break,
just to keep it from falling in your lap.
The same one that topples
when you lit the cigarette that cut
creases into the corners of your lips.
(Here, look; if I just bend my head to this side,
you can see mine.)
Because there’s only a few years
—five, give or take—
where the salt lines of the morning
paint the kind of river down your cheeks
where the mascara can shine
even where it was never meant to slide.
(It was just this year, I think, I learned to leave
hours before the day would even want to break.)
This wasting-away of the cut-and-fills
courses through every ripple in the curve,
but doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look
into the bottom of a tree throw,
or find the handle of the bag
you left there, packed, weeks before.
(And there, that’s the place you start to like
the look of the dirt under your nails.)
Lindsay Hutton 