Love Made Bruises by Alison Stine

On my hill I remember teeth.
The winter house cracked.

Cockroaches came from dark rivers.
The town exhausted its salt.

Love made bruises, drawing up
the blood like poison from bees.

We are never going to make it
through this winter, this winter,

everyone said. No one used glasses,
only jars. He bit, then apologized.

Schools closed for days. Roads
closed for days. The fire truck

blocked the mouth of my street.
I went to sleep with light spitting.

I bought ice grips. A woman said
it was going to be bad; in the fall

her fields had given gold—and God
provides. It’s fine, I said. I said

I like it. I tensed, and the pain was
sweet. Even sweeter: the expectation.

Lost in the night. In my mind,
we may be rising, still: the bed

of the boarding house, his mouth
bearing down, white drift

of my breast. Radiators turned.
Snow turned. The town turned

to gravel, sand. I photographed
the kiss he left.

*

Alison Stine’s most recent book of fiction is The Protectors (Little A, 2016), and her most recent book of poetry is Wait (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). She lives with her son in the foothills of Appalachia.