Aubade With a Game of Twenty Questions

FM Stringer

I ask if it’s tangible. I ask, can it fit
inside a shoebox? Is it alive?
On the long drive home the morning after
your cousin’s wedding: cows, roadside
sweet corn stands, combination gas station
bait and tackle shops. When we visit,
your accent comes out, sticks around.
Oranges squeeze to ornjes.
The crick along the path 
from the bus stop to your childhood home
is, you map it out for me, down‘ere.
I can’t get enough. I want
to be a mosquito stuck to the honey
on the end of your spoon. I want to be
the Jurassic Park mosquito
except what I’m encased in is you
and the genetic material I carry
is recessive. I ask if it is
a specific instance of something.
Does it exist in our physical realm?
This is how we pass the time,
though I suppose most of what we do
is passing time: We hang curtains,
we weed the yard. We eat delightedly,
together most days. Sometimes I look out
a window and find us in a different season,
a new year. I’m alarmed, afraid
it’s all happening so fast I’m missing it. We part
the curtains, we clear the kitchen sink.
We stand in the yard at dusk
to take a moment, savor it, save it.
Mosquitoes feast on our naked legs.
Is it something you would describe
as lost or disappeared?
I don’t know what my life’s purpose is,
if it has one, if it’s supposed to have one.
What it’s meant to amount to.
But right now it’s plenty
to make the slow way home with you,
point out every last cow, and horse, and try
to make a guess. Get one question
closer at a time. Watch you grin,
hear you say yes.

FM Stringer’s writing can be found or is forthcoming in the North American Review, West Trade Review, RHINO, and elsewhere. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and dogs.