What Breathes

I suppose, great
archaeologist that you
are, you were dreaming of
excavating something rare
and enduring when you
bent to the bones of my face.
Cupping my chin, you seemed
to cradle some dusty urn
with tales painted just under
the film. It was not a new story.

You treated me as frailly as
fish bones, and I wanted touch.
You longed to assemble a
skeleton that said something about
Women; I hungered to be fleshed
into a woman. It’s the same
old story straight from the dig:
you were trying to exhume me,
but my blood was still beating.
You were studying the capillaries
while the arteries were bleeding.

postcard

just a line to let you know
we’re doing fine
we’ve learned how to scale
that cold chain link between us
without impaling ourselves
we’re never in the same place
at the same time     have burned
the maps, they were so
unreliable

we’ve taken back all the good
and bad, the descriptions and
itineraries     we’re just two embryos,
weightless in our sacs, that cannot
touch

just to let you know
not to worry: we have both
stopped    he looks at me with
the eyes of a stunned animal;
i am a car still in the middle
of the road, glaring headlights
working until the battery dies     there
is no wind, and the trees look on
ashamed

i want to phone you, my auto club,
to come and bail me out but time
will bring our luggage home    the
trip will end, and we will have our
photographs

Rose Bedrosian is a California poet and artist. She received her B.A. in Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she edited the literary magazine, Spectrum, and won The Frank W. Coulter Prize for poetry. A first-place winner of The Independent poetry competition, her work has been published or is forthcoming in various journals, including San Pedro River Review, Concerning Poetry, The Beatnik Cowboy, Blue Unicorn, Penn Review, Verse-Virtual, Pembroke Magazine, Ginger Hill, Northridge Review, and Negative Capability. Her books include A Furniture of Words and three chapbooks, Sunrise of Goodbyes, The Medicine of Descent, and Sparkle in the Dark.