a poem by ted meyer

Living with a C 


An open circle
has a beginning
and an end.
You don’t feel it,

but you do. Each night
she put lotion on her legs
and slipped
through my hands,

pushing me back
against the terrible
curve
of her spine. She coughed

the word “lucky”
in her sleep. Our apartment
was made from spilt principles
and debt. She was a smile

turned on its side,
she was a cup
spilling wine.
Our apartment

was made
from affection
and dust. Nothing
phased her, not

even me. Her
crescent nails swam
through Capricorn
and dreamed

the horns of rams.
The past floats back
and forth. These days
I take my body

into the world
like an infant
so it can love
with its mouth open

and look around. But I come home
expecting her, bent over
counting change
and clipping coupons

for the store, tending
the animals
that lived with us
and died.  Waste

not, want
more. The past
drifts in
like an argument

through a closed door,
telling a story
I don’t really believe;

we said goodbye,
she left,
the streets below us laughed
and groaned

their throaty noise.
Our stomachs
shifted, our checks
unbalanced

from what we paid
to be apart. People
wave, shake
hands, hug.

But we
weren’t people
anymore.

We were ends.

Ted Meyer holds a BA in English from Princeton University, and an MFA in Poetry from NYU. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Linebreak, The Literary Review, The New Orleans Review, Witness, Poetry Flash, and Lyre Lyre. He lives and works in New York City, and recently moved to Brooklyn. Which is pretty cool of him, he feels.