Let’s spend the day in bed, all day in bed,
at least until noon, and without so much
as a stitch on. Let’s offer
the eager advocates of meritocracy
a way smack out the door. May they
leave quietly and not disturb our rest.
And let’s never say, “We deserve this.”
Even to think it, risks getting us back,
climbing the Himalayas of accomplishment—
hurried, harried, heart-worn,
and breathing the thin air of peaks and pinnacles.
Back in a time of angst and ambition,
a friend said, “You look like a starving
Aphrodite.” But now we can picnic
on bedsheets redolent with the scent
of our bodies, now doze in a summer’s
hum of bees as they do their fervent
renditions of the blues, now savor
the honey that drips from the lip
of each moment, recovering from losses
we didn’t even know we had. If life is
a brief parenthesis, let’s pull the sheets up
over our heads, and with our bodies
pressed together side by side, your arms
around me, my long thigh slung over your hip,
let’s take our ease. Let’s not bring even one
book to bed. Let’s bless every misuse of
lie and lay. Let’s lay down all day. Let’s vow
to be perfectly useless. I’ve laid by
a store of mangoes and roses. Make a wish.
Mine is to forget everything except
what happens after (oh yes) you kiss my breasts.

On January 10, 2022   /   2021 Literary Anthology