Marion

by Josh Gaydos

a support beam through the living room, 

a mast, noodle bags swept  

under the box spring,  

a baby crying  

across the freckled mint hallway  

you’re swaddled in  

three felt blankets, anemic  

a December  

when the bed was all that kept us warm,  

thrifting for couches and instead  

buying cheap dinners out,  

with two blue towels between us,  

with yesterday’s clothes as a mat  

we drank cold Coors in the shower,  

bought a space heater from Family Dollar  

and read out the lines of the single mother  

in your play  

I pictured her in the U-Haul,  

her three boys in 90s puffer jackets  

stuffed across the gray seats,  

the youngest on the eldest’s lap  

I thought of them scraping  

the remnants of the mud driveway  

from their black boots,  

the concrete slab catching flakes of dirt

like the crumbs of crackers sifted through

when I dug for meter change, when you

parked out front having drifted here

on your duct tape fender  

with all you owned in the back seat  

in that half century old closet  

I hung the suits of selves I’d known before,  

I turned back to you, a smiling sidewinder,  

your hair curling, unbound  

there we were  

dancing between the herding stick  

and the grate, our sheen not sheared 

you in hand-me-down overalls,  

pine green  

once I dreamed  

that through binoculars I’d seen silver insects

hanging from your ears  

bounding across the highway to meet me, 

I’d reacquaint with your jet black beret 

leaning to the left, you had been  

catching gold in the sun, gold in the tumult  

had we gone out of  

ourselves  

and struck it rich?