Thanksgiving

I wake falling,
speaking my own language,
the rain spilling down in sand dollars,
dark and too rich
to earn.

i’ve seen them in the long, lowlit rooms: how they take pride
in opening each other, wine, hooking in with the corkscrew weapon,
increasing the pressure through to rasps, bubbles, raptures. the green glass
never breaks. then, how he kisses: the jangle of keys in a blue lock, the tug, the pop,
her reversed breath, careful wine ferning upward, taking his eyes, the air.

The Paris I imagined, a fragile old watch to carry, so easy to break or lose. Calcite city I got, geode wearing down like slow frost, heels making their hooded sounds, snatching up the buds of cobblestones; shop windows clicked off, then the clouds. I left the dinner party ponderous with silverware, the globes of wineglasses centered over their own stems’ prim rings, the rules for passing plates, always left man to man so that each may serve the woman to his right. I caromed for hours, feathered with damp. The museums slowly shut their doors, last thick gasps of rarified cold; fire jugglers flamed briefly, longer, thinner, stretched to delicate trees and burning brush, something to hold in the eyes alone. Voices drank them up. Hooded saints in arabesques; smoke of crêpes, panini, cardboard signs; I anchored finally on the Pont des Arts, and the fire jugglers became students with glowing cigarettes, thin jackets, growing smaller as I grew cold. I waited there while the Seine ran under us, that dirty brown continuing on like crushed beer bottles below my feet, like something I’d seen over and over, something I knew, dulling the laughter and the stars a little, till I could absorb them.

Chalcey Wilding was born and raised in New York; currently she is the all-around intern for Portland's Poetry Northwest. This summer she is practicing patience by learning how to garden, bike, file alphabetically, drive, work leather, chop wood, revise poetry, and convince small children to share.