Mercy of the Clarinetist, Libations to the Glass

Lauren was patient as a fern.
She did not even laugh when I said the sadness felt like a cylinder of frozen peas,
But made me sit with the thing so plain I couldn't make a metaphor of it.

That's what was left after I hurled glass bottles into a concrete wall,
Hoping the itch would leave my golgothan hands.
Some of it did, but glass shards lurked in the weeds
And I could not gather them all.
It's the kind of cold that burns, I said. Not the comfortable cool
Every Louisiania-born fat woman longs for from March to October.

What clenches in my abdomen, what leaves long red marks
On my face when I wake in the morning
Is the loneliness of the small, round, hard things you microwave
When there is no one else to cook for.