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Making Love to the Same Man for Fifteen Years
Poetry by Leah Browning
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Excerpts
On the Drive Back to Durango,
I Wake Up in Taos
Immediately, the landscape is wrong,
all shades of brown, and you are sheepish,
sure that you must have missed a sign
or two. I am on my way back to college
after a break, and I am furious to find myself
still in New Mexico, off in the wrong direction,
when I should already be in Colorado,
sitting at my desk, studying for exams.
I want to go back to that moment now, to be
the girl I once was, in those months before we married.
I would tell you, “It was a harmless mistake.”
I would tell you, “It could have happened to anyone.”
We would leave the car and walk through the streets
holding hands. I want to superimpose this image,
obscuring the one where the girl takes the wheel
and turns them around, driving away from the unexpected
city with a mouth as sour as vinegar.
The Poem I Should Have Written
Perhaps the language was too clinical
for a love poem. Even my mother
had to ask what it meant.
After you read it, you told me
that you had been absolutely smitten.
Always your hand at my waist, red dress.
I dreamt of you again last night.
The hammock under a tree
next to the house, warm summer
night in the moonlight,
your mother’s flower beds.
Everything is made of paper now.
No matter how I fold the words,
I can’t turn them into something real.
Still, I keep trying.
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