Pishtaco

Linda Wojtowick

At Sunday barbecue she sees him he fetching chairs

for the pastel dames in the shade. What a saint, she thinks.

He’s always been a baby-kisser. Shorthand for glazed.

Like: just today after their night in her burned-nerve house

he was light, he was goddamned cool. He was a breeze.

He was a mint on a window in a rain.

Strange, a choir member says. That they don’t

prefer the fruit. The candied eggs. They mean

the tizzy of bees cruising potato salad on their plates.

But in her sink the spring ants will ignore sweet whiskey

dregs and storm the butter-smeared knives. Swarm to her

mayonnaise spoons. It seemed they craved

not the sweet but the fat. Is that like him, she thinks.

Does this nature compare.

Mostly now their love dance is just her watching him

watching her list unhelmed. Steering through rocks.

On bright days especially. When time is strange and thin.

Like: two hours ago it was church. They drove here and then

they went inside. Vestments were locked. Birds trilled

on wires. Blue ties were smiling in the morn.