hinge
the hardware store hinge drawer
doesn’t slide wide enough to
hold the variety of ways i need to bend.
there’s forwards, for obvious and
perhaps salacious reasons.
sideways, at yoga class or
to connect two drifting partners,
over beer, lunch, in bed.
over backwards, regularly,
accommodating the many
infinite variations of what we,
any of us in this polycule,
perceive as need, until
i realize that this hinge is
about to snap needs some
grease needs a break was
never designed to bend that way
and i pause. reopen the drawer,
shuffle my body around in its contents.
vih
b, born into deep french
québécois-ized indigeneity,
lives in the language of the second colonizers
so much now that
at the coffee shop
where he worked
his french customers came
back when he returned,
salut! comment ça va? and
still, b needed 30 seconds
to find his french.
just 30 seconds and
you can do almost anything,
in any language.
take a coffee order, or
break a person. save them,
even if b doesn’t know it until
the first test says so, the doctor says
those 3 inverted letters french to english,
and b calls you right away,
collapses
with you and your husband
over zoom on valentine’s day.
until 1 month later, when the second test says
b: your new medication is working.
until now: undetectable, untransmittable.
30 seconds and
you can tell your mom a hard secret
in your not-your-boyfriends’ backyard,
in a language
you are learning to share.
you can learn that 3 inverted letters are
no longer a death sentence, in either language,
no matter how upside down it feels,
and now, your mother knows.
