"Hush"

<p><i>by Rishma Dunlop </i></p><separator></separator><p>All winter in stucco on 65th I learned to love
<br />what couldn’t speak: what began in milk and </p><separator></separator><div>blood. Baby, cat, the man who worked long weeks
<br />away from home. Forty below. My breath before me, <br /><br />snow covering stiff trees burlapped against 
<br />a procession of storms. I shoveled walks, plugged<br /><br />the car into a black heater. Nursed the baby, fed
<br />the cat. Waited for the man who I was slow to love. <br /><br />Sometimes I’d ride the bus to the bistro, 
<br />the only place in town that served espresso—<br /><br />let it flow bitter down my throat—
<br />the bistro where Czech brothers in crisp white<br /><br />shirts and black trousers knew all about the baby, 
<br />the cat, the man who was away and I was slow to love.<br /><br />At home, in quiet, I folded laundry, changed the baby’s 
<br />diapers, fed the cat, watched backyards fill with snow. <br /><br />In spring, green pushing through sidewalk cracks, 
<br />I woke, pressed my mouth to the back of the man—<br /><br />you—who I was slow to love. And bed and house
<br />smelled forever of me falling suddenly into love, rappelling <br /><br />the past in a blaze through decades of renovations, creak 
<br />of floorboards, families coming and going, ledgers of forgotten <br /><br />bills, tables laid for supper, someone waving on a front porch, <br />
new brides, the washing of the dead, all the stories<br /><br />I never wrote about us, your arms around the baby, 
<br />around me, sealed into cracked plaster with a kiss.   <p>&nbsp;</p><separator></separator></div></p>