Honeymoon Period

posted Feb 14, 2012

The refrigerator buzzing was all you could hear for a week. She got wet in the
     dentist's chair again;
you went to dinner and discussed fatalism. Neighborhood kids discovered
     water bottle explosions
and you wished silently for a backfire from the kitchen window, until you saw
     that boy kiss his mother at Lola's Pizza
     and the woman dancing with her baby to Paint it Black.
You know before you she was fat. That summer there were always
     a girl's empty rain boots across the street
     and when you woke up with a cold body she had all the blankets,
so you fell back asleep and dreamed up blankets.

Alissa Fleck's work has appeared in the Argos anthology Why I am Not a Painter and Thoughtsmith's online literary magazine, and is forthcoming in the FutureCycle Press anthology American Society: What Poets See. She is from Minneapolis, and currently resides in New York City.