Two Poems by Anne Starling

Conversations with My Son

The longest one lasted twelve minutes.
I held my breath.
He was happy. He had something to tell me.
He was leaving.
He was almost gone.
I can still see us together at that moment,
Nick at thirteen, sitting on the sun porch floor,
playing with the dog’s ears, his whole face
open to me as he talked about his two new
friends, his new school. Open as the weed-
flowers he used to rush inside to bestow
when he was little. So then,
I wasn’t thinking about starting dinner,
or of the magazine article I’d set aside.
Or of the word he’d used— “mavericks”—
to describe the trio of classmates he
so proudly
claimed to lead. I was trying to be happy;
I was happy for him. The world would soon turn
unrecognizable, would become something
I couldn’t imagine. Not the world: of course
I mean life. I mean my life. From then on,
the world was smoldering, until everything
went up in flames. I could show you.
I have the ashes.

*

Love Story

Living alone for the first time in my mid-twenties.
I aimed to be worthy of my independence.

I had a space all mine, half a duplex. When the heat
refused to come on, he arrived with a tuna-fish sandwich

he’d made himself. It had too much mustard, because
he liked to lavish it on, but it was delicious. I must have

been hungry and cold. Anyway, he did whatever he
does to make things work and got the heat going. When

he offered to wash my car. I balked a little. We hadn’t
been going out long, I gave a brief speech about needing

to do things for myself, as a grown-ass woman (to put it
in his terms). He waited till I stopped talking, then asked

“Can I throw dirt on your car for you?” Reader, I married him.

*

Anne Starling is a poet from Florida. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, and Tampa Review, among other journals. Her poem “Shoe Store” appeared in Missouri Review Online as Poem of the Week.