Variable

When the hysterics home
in me: it is uncanny, a new 
sort of normal. He says
he loves how my kitty eyes 
turn lynx cat when I lose it.
He makes me feel perilous.
Five days after the ordeal
with the paramedics, he 
gets me fruits for solstice. 
I undress an orange and 
the selkies in the pool of 
his voice lull me to important 
things like pea soup fog and 
boat sails, drift glass in dress 
pockets.

In bed and bundled up:
we make crossed swords with
our legs. Slant falls the rain, 
pelting trouble at rattly panes
in the windows. He talks 
about me resting like it is currency 
and I explain I keep forgetting 
the theory of spoons. 

Later, the sepia fuzz of the 
shipping forecast. Cromarty. 
Southwest winds 6 to gale 8
with rough or very rough seas, 
rain with visibility becoming 
poor to none. He writes nouns
with feather-fingers in the tarn
of my back and the room
starts to blue. Snow in my
head drops slower; a settling. 
Outside, where it is too big, 
winter passes at 100 mph.