Kory Wells
Kory Wells is a poet, writer, and advocate for the arts, democracy, and other good causes. Author of Heaven Was the Moon (March Street Press), she’s the principal founder of Poetry in the Boro, a reading and open mic series in her hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In 2017 she was selected the city’s inaugural poet laureate. Her work appears in James Dickey Review, Ruminate, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and other publications. Find her online at korywells.com.
You Are Not Who You Thought You Were
You professed to be a woman
who preferred showers,
but here you are
in a place with only a tub. It is
a nice tub, deep and gleaming white,
solid on four shapely dark legs,
and in considering it, you consider
the likelihood you smell
of smoke from the morning fire,
and so, in the bright mid-day
say you decide to fill the tub
plumb to the rim. Say you strip
your flannel and climb in
the water warm as a lover.
That at first you sit upright
and read your magazine,
but the water licking your legs
works its seduction, and before long
you turn to the shampoo bottle
on the windowsill and say, “Why not?”
That you edge your body first forward,
then down, down, so the water tickles
your ears and your breasts rise
like little islands in the ocean
of all you carry—your worry and hurry
and guilt (which at the moment
you feel not the least, except for
the tiniest bit of guilt that you
don’t feel more guilty). Say that
after a while you say what the hell
and dip your head back and under,
then lather your graying hair,
and for the first time in years—
because showers are loud—
you hear the tiny molecular engine of suds.
Rinsing, say you look at your body—
its fine hairs and fleshy softness,
its paleness riven by dark lines
you usually think unsightly. But now,
tracing your finger along a thigh’s
large vein to branches
of smaller veins, you think, tree
You think, river. You think, I am
creation. I am mystery. Even
mysterious. Who’s to say
what elements are coursing
in those indigo veins?
And now you rise
from the water still warm
and have to resist the urge
to open the window wide
to the icy cobalt wind.
Say you drop your towel
to the floor by your clothes
and levitate to the bed,
damp and naked, and
slip between the sheets
feeling all pink and teal
and tingly. Say it feels like
it’s been hours, but it’s only
noon. That you like your meals
on schedule, but today
you’re skipping lunch.
Say you were wrong
about this tub thing,
and you can’t wait to be
wrong again, because being
wrong feels a little wicked—
lush and wicked and new.
I confess I’ve never been completely satisfied
—in my kitchen, although I love its butterscotch walls and copper spoons, its pressed glass jars
of sugar, the ragged sound of their rusting screw-top lids. The room is too small. I’ve tried on the
words cozy, intimate. Found the fit revelatory. How padded my ribs have become. Bread and
butter, cake and frosting—I confess these excesses, but if you asked, I have some shame. I
confess to affairs of the heart. To loving first one room and then another, for the light, for the
sloping golden oak floors. I confess to an eye that roams, to an addiction for odd dishes and glass
rabbits, for sweetened coffee and books. Of course books. And anyone who reads. It’s true you
still bring me chocolate. But don’t you miss our desire shaking the mirrors on the wall? I’ve
cried for such want, tears like Karo syrup. Call me hopeless, romantic. I’ve become a woman
who adds sugar to beans. I’ve crashed parties for the cake’s biggest buttercream rose. I’ve taken
it all at once in my mouth.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 