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"Part Delicacy, Part Despair" by Leslie Cairns



I’m Aware that when I do all the dog walks at night, I should carry 

my car keys. That my job is laced with sloppy kisses, but just under that, the potentiality for nighttime

To carve its name inside of me.


I should carry metal, the kind that smells like blood,  in between my thumb and ring finger–

Just in case the past comes back in the ways we do not name. I spend Thanksgivings alone but I think of ones I’ve been to in the past: laden with pie and cards and games won for a quarter, near farms and rosy cheeks. A former teacher’s kids telling me – a virtual stranger– what they’re grateful for  the year ahead, as I memorized her linens. She put the fork tines in, towards the gut, like the sharp pieces should be close, to keep them safe. If you see me alone with a carving knife, and I’m smiling

It’s because I’m not fully alone,

I’m thinking of the dinners past, the glimmer of the ones you loved me then,

But did not linger.


I grab the husky’s leash – one of three– from the apartment, which was painted black with spires. To be transparent, they said. To remind us where we stand. The way my work told me therapy was okay once in a while, the notes they didn’t say (about my brain) were quite plain. 


Half smiles & they still hand me coffee, out of politeness, but I notice their downturned mouths.  & the way my braid is too frizzy for corporate life, but I wish I could change, for them, or if I outta. Now, brisk pace and shallowed haunting breath; I walk the dogs one at a time 

because a pack

Is too strong

To contend with,

The owner said. One at a time, and they’ll love you.

In a pack, they’ll overtake you. They’ll sense you don’t belong.


I recognized that song, that refrain from smudged glass and vodka shots that I didn’t ask for

And the college boys pressed too neatly

When they kicked you out at midnight, with swirling flakes

Because you didn’t say their names

Correctly.


My Mom kicked me out in winter solstice once–


The light from space holy



The snowflakes


 landing in the hottub



Where I stood for a minute, before I left, crumbling.

Feeling the steam sink into me

Slowly. Snowflakes (so pulsing, so delicate, so unique) disappear under

Arguments too hot, temperatures rising too boldly.


Still, I lingered: one more time. Taking her words in for another minute, if only I could hold the heat

Inside, like a glove that wasn’t really mine. As she told me with fang–


To go away.


The dog I walk now: she had a puppy.

&  the owner kept one from the litter. Couldn’t separate all the baby heartbeats

From the ones that loved them diligently, hovering.


When I say her daughter’s name, even though she’s banal fang,

The husky looks at me with a look that is unexplainable; the dictionary couldn’t give me a word. It tried (lunar, part, kisses, dark). The look the mother gave me:  part delicacy, part despair

& a little bit of haughty integrity. The way she still takes time to mark the rock in front of her before

Going back to her young, as if to remind her daughter of her place 

& where she came from.


& yet I cry, counting spires that once used to be dressed in candlelight color, 

Thinking that this part-wolf mix

That I walk for twenty bucks

Loves her puppy more than my own mother

Ever

Loved me. 


If only I could be so lucky to have a mother recognize the way another

Says my name in vowel sounds, the hesitancy–


If only I could get her to envelop me with paths that lead me back

From midnight hours, clutched car keys, too much therapy

All the way 

To safety. If only she would bellow out for me

To come back.





Leslie Cairns is from Denver, CO. She has a chapbook out with Bottlecap Press ('The Food is the Fodder'). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee (2023).

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