Hypothetically Speaking

 Hypothetically Speaking

The richest yield the garden bore was before 

you soiled it with seed, before the natives 

became weeds because you didn’t plant them 

there and the fence was stacked 

in lumber racks at the hardware store 

with potential still for perfectly plumb. 

Your significant other, too, kept their figure 

firm as a fresh cucumber twenty years 

into your marriage before you met 

them, their priorities in prim rows 

well-tilled and running parallel to your own.

The summers there were never oppressively

hot, the spouses most certainly were,

and the houses rarely needed repair, till you—

your very real body with its very real

hunger tiptoeing for the glint of it all

at the top of the trellis—found the cardinal’s nest

among other tangles on which matter insists.