"She Needs To Know My Skin Isn't Whitening But My Hair Is" by Marcy Rae Henry
It scares me to have my lists taken away
Wax
Stamps
Parchment
When I stay awake in the blackness
squinting myopically on my side of the border
I challenge myself to write letters to Z
and seal them in envelopes before I regret them
wolves cooperate on the kill
they can follow a scent across
the Río Grande
Thread
Turmeric
Tulips
In the letters I ask her to bring me things I need in the desert
and draw crude maps where the road forks in my direction
but I don’t ask when she will return
She needs to know I am brown but not embarrassed
I am naked at least twice each day I just have to remind myself
to stop dying
in the feminine way and to buy more things
A Whetstone
Oil
Lemons
Linen
in a wolfpack only
the dominant
male and female breed
While the wax is drying I write different endings to our story
They always include the ceremony she suggested
where we lick bee syrup off each other’s fingers
And just when I make progress
I erase and start over (pressing on the pencil
so the indentations will still be available)
No question who would be top dog were Z and I wolves
She is monotheistic foreign but exotic
So she can come and go as she pleases
At times it pleases her not to respond
Or to ignore my need for
Matches
Kindling
Kissing
When she lived with me she’d wake at halfday and walk through
the living room halfnaked her tips poking at her t-shirt
implying flight at any moment
Sometimes she would bring me sunflowers
More than once she tossed my enumerations into a bin
filled with ground coffee and piles of peels and rinds
The victors gave us a saint and a prayer for lost things
Hard to say if she is lost or just gone
But if they keep bringing us old world diseases wrapped in blankets
and plastic and setting the dogs on us I’ll have to keep
shifting south and she might never find me
even a lone wolf seeks out another wolf
because wolves want
to belong to each other
If Z comes back she’ll have to be transparent
as a palimpsest and stop washing me off her
Then we can update the guest list
and buy things to hold a ritual
Honey
Silver rings
Hair dye
Marcy Rae Henry is a Latina born and raised in Mexican-America/The Borderlands. She has lived in Spain, India, and Nepal and once rode a motorcycle through the Middle East. Her writing has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. Ms. M.R. Henry is a digital minimalist with no social media accounts. She is working on a collection of poems and two novellas.
