A sun on a card on a patchwork box next to
her bed, tarot sun and two lovers not kissing just
looking at one another. She says she fell

in love with his hands first. Here’s where
to insert an aside, not formally, just casually. He
says it is her eyes still in the sun as she sits

on the sidewalk a heated patch. She rests inside
the tarot before she places cards into his hands, shuffles
her long fingers, divines using the middle one.

A middle way does not allow for asides even
on stage he looks at her cannot decide now
between her eyes which one is the lazy one

for she’s closed them against his claims, brought
her own body over a rise of boulders by sturdy feet.
The aside waits at the crevice where he inserts

his fingers before she even arrives. Or maybe it is
a common tree, a kind of weeping intimately. He can’t
eat what she eats anymore, no onion, and so

breathes into her heart at the crevice at the bed by
the sun not kissing just looking at the debris. If there were
something like blood between her legs, then there is where

an aside would venture its echo. She says she fell
many times while running up the stairs no it was down
from beside the sun where she is burning. His eyes

watch her distance from the couch for the heat as she speaks
of wishing not to know the future. Melancholy always wins
she tells him, tells him with her hands, how to hold

before she formally finds her feet beneath her in the middle
of the stage suffering seductions. The script already belongs
to her even though it only just arrived. It’s a delay she says

a reluctance of the heart. He believes the moment is
passed simply because the moment has passed.

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 2.

Jessica Rigney is a poet, artist, and filmmaker. Her works have appeared in various journals and can be found as letterpress broadsides with Wolverine Farm Publishing. She was a quarter-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry in 2016 and 2018. Find her performing her poetry with local bands along the Colorado front range where she makes her home. She is poetjess on Instagram.

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