Dear Lisa,
In a place unknown to me,
Rutland as foreign as Europe,
your hands help others.
Mine are so useless.
I am deep in March,
self-pitying, bored.
I want to sit with you again
in a living room that is
neither yours, nor mine,
where no one has to get drinks,
stir a sauce, or
even consider what would be hospitable.
I want to watch the commas
of your hands folded carefully as you talk,
listen to the quiet
of your voice, its constant evenness
which I trusted immediately.
March is a dirty month.
The floors need attention.
The sink is always loaded with dishes.
It’s too early to air anything out.
My hands busy themselves
with the monthly maintenance,
the doing of things, the endless
lists.
Today, laundry day,
a dazed wasp fell in my hair.
Something crisp, hard
in all the soft nothingness
of any given day.
When you write,
tell me where this all ends,
tell me when, if you remember,
what day the forsythias will bloom
and explode all their yellow light
over spring.
Jennifer Judge has lived, worked, and created in northeastern Pennsylvania her entire life. She teaches creative writing and composition at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and earned her MFA from Goddard College. She lives in Dallas, PA with her husband and two daughters. Her essays and poems have appeared in Literary Mama, Blueline, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Every Pigeon, Pocket Change Literary Magazine, and Under the Gum Tree.
Photographer’s Note: Although this is a fairly literal interpretation of the last few lines of the poem, it is also a metaphorical one as well. This poem evokes my own feelings of moments when I am just existing in a bored funk, longing for a rebirth of inspiration and motivation – just waiting for the creative bud to bloom again.