What She Will Do

She will make you watch for allusions in shows, books, movies. She will cause you to chew a little slower, to un-hamfist your fork and get your elbows off the table. She will alert you to the mounds of garbage mountain-ranging through your apartment, the clothes un-hampered and wrinkled. She will teach you what cumin is. She will show you how to follow a recipe. She will convince you to get slippers, to not walk barefoot through a home of garbage. She will say hey you should clean up this garbage home. She will get you to clean up this garbage home. She will drink your tea and read your stories at night, blue-and-white flashing police box outside the only light to read by. She will take you to an Asheville drum circle where you will dance and frolic. She will smell of the ocean and of furs, many furs. She will kiss your nose after she comes, a tiny present for what has happened here between you. She will will shebears to come for you if you ever piss her off. She will smell of cinnamon and the must of her pillow, which will not go away, even after the wash. She will check your phone and find nothing. She will ask what you have deleted. She will say you’re a fuck and she can smell it on you. She will not believe that the smell is her smell, that it always has been. She will be able to get around your garbage home without once looking at you: a magic trick. She will run the sink loud enough for you to not hear when she’s “freshening up.” She will not know that you can hear her retching, the quiet drops into porcelain. She will water down your bottles of hard cider, put her socks in the fridge. She will come home to drop her things and to drop her keys and to drop on the couch. She will be dropping all the time. She will say do you love me, say not ask, in her sleep, on the couch, on the floor, wherever it’s horizontal. She will make biscuits for a small army, eat one, give the rest to the squirrels. She will make them happy squirrels. She will break her key off in the lock, close the door, lock you out. She will not answer the door no matter what you say, what you do. She will hang your belongings from rope outside the windows: an art installation. She will have men over to sit on the other side of the room, tell them to wait for their appointed time, make them leave. She will try to do the right thing. She will say I can’t hear you this is a soundproof door, I don’t need you, come back tomorrow. She will Eternal Sunshine you, then remember, then Eternal Sunshine you again. She will let you in. She will ignore the garbage mountain ranges, the piedmont of dirty clothes. She will put her elbows on the table. She will hamfist her fork. She will have something on as background noise, feed-swiping, coming up for air when necessary. She will fall asleep there, somewhere it’s horizontal, and you will put a blanket over her. She will rest.