I asked you about the novel you were reading
and realized too late I was flirting,
despite wearing an oversized nautical sweater
and a fanny pack designed to carry
a child around my postpartum fat.
You were playing Pavement
but didn’t know the band,
and I forgave that,
looking in your pretty face as you said witchy playlist,
feeling that sense of undeniable possibility,
and underneath, the scintillating savor
of my own internalized shame.
It’s what we all dream of, right?
Witchiness, which means
taking ourselves to the forest to dance naked
away from laundry and picking up
countless old socks and half-full Coke cans—
in other words, away from men.
I’m sorry for my fantasies
of a wife, girlfriend, women,
when I outlive my husband,
sorry for breaking the illusion
when he came in with his beard and his requests,
his sense the world was made for him,
and asked to use your restroom,
to which you said no.
Harriet Weaver is a Los Angeles–based writer with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a BA from Yale University, where she studied with Harold Bloom. She was recently published in the Los Angeles Review of Books journal PubLab and has poetry forthcoming from Roanoke Review. In her previous career as actor and producer, Harriet studied under Wynn Handman and brought shows to Broadway with Blue Spruce Productions. She was an instructor of poetry and composition at UC Irvine. She grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and Wexford, Pennsylvania, and lives in LA with her husband and toddler.
Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
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