disorder reigns

4

I cut thick strips of imitation challah while our black cat, her mean eyes turned downward, licks the end of the loaf. I will beat the rain, I think. We will make it to the boats. I dip the bread in egg-cinnamon-death batter and fry it. Quietly, I open a bottle of champagne and pour half of it in the thermos. Pre-rain light fills the kitchen. Through the window I watch the drizzle, thin as cat spit, fall on the neighbor's underfed roosters. The crack on our bathroom ceiling begins to weep, and the rain doesn't let up for hours. Today is the day I've planned to propose to my girlfriend outside on a boat in New Orleans' City Park, and the rain keeps singing harder. After breakfast, my girlfriend goes on the back porch so she can watch the storm. I stay in the doorway, reaching my hands out so the smug drops can fall on them. I love the rain, my girlfriend says. We'll just go the boats next weekend, she says. I don't know why you're so sad about this. It's going to storm all day. I follow her inside, have an almost-transparent mimosa, and think about how she loves to see me frustrated. Unable to make sense of the pile of clothes she's left on the floor or the mug of coffee she's put in the fridge "for tomorrow." ​ The first time we saw the supermoon we were somewhere between together and not, drinking Sweet Bitch wine and watching Modern Times. The stakes of each tarot reading she did were so high, and I made fun of her protective circles but wanted to stay inside them, just a little longer. I think about how later, if I make it to later, the moon will hang like a red-orange mane over the restaurant where we're having our engagement dinner. While she reads V.S. Naipaul in the other room, I put the thermos champagne into gold-edged teacups. You have to put your book down, I say as I get down on my knees and produce a ring that mimics a vine, a marquise-set ruby branching off as one of the leaves. In one of my earliest emails to her, back when we lived in New York, I said we should "tend these dark roots already growing between us." Our situation is no longer so romantic or desperate. We've tended to each other, and to ourselves, for years. But at night, sometimes, when she's thrown her leg over mine, I'm reminded of when I used to feel new growth under my skin, like I was becoming a strand of ivy, green and brave enough to touch her back.

Jennifer Hanks is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet (Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon, both forthcoming in 2016. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as PANK, Arcadia, Autostraddle, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and Menacing Hedge. She was awarded a 2015 summer residency at Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN. Follow her at @corsetofscales and http://azura09.tumblr.com/

For more work by Jennifer Hanks, visit her page on our Online Sundries site.