Virginia is for Lovers
Clarke e. Andros
I.
My girl; goddamn is she batshit.
Through all the ways of love-sick persuasion
she has dragged me out to Lancaster.
My Friday off, we are rooting
through knitting machines at a hoarders home.
I leave her to forage in the dust,
while I finger stacks of
dead lighters, doilies, pins, dice, wrenches, bobbins, tape cassettes, operation manuals, charging chords, and yogurt tubs.
She’s nicknamed the seller Spooky-Ron
he’s all beard and chainsmoke cigs.
His lack of hearing has him touching
every item, shouting every question,
holding back the webs.
Fate is settled in parking lots and moving sales,
an endless response to classifieds.
II.
I follow Ron inside
as if he keeps some truth for wanting.
In his room chaos is only quelled
in tray-stacked butts aligning.
I ask him why he’s moving
standing on carpet caked in litter.
Virginia is calling this ole western boy
to tame his sorrowed heart with a southern girl.
Her gift? He saved her two rusted ax heads
his thumb running along the corroded edge.
He’s a re-formed agnostic
his wife’s death set the sun on a closing world
but since he met his new girl
he’s been bathed in small miracles,
crossing the continent to drown in them.
I say, “Virginia is for Lovers”
He smiles, but does not hear me.
III.
His late wife was a seamstress
making gowns for brides in Chicago
only to leave a hoarder searching
on the high-desert plateaus.
Why else do we clutch but for hope of keeping
lost love, “what was”, and memories,
Ron held her old machines as an effigy
and with unbelieving heart hoped to resurrect
that girl that had abandoned him.
I walk out from cat piss interior and watch my sun soaked girl
rising through the offering. Then I know
I would keep everything.
Every touch, every pen, every breath, every button, every q-tip, every shirt, every spoon, every tool, every napkin, every look, every snap, every sock, every brush, every sweat, every hair, every scrap, every kiss, every crumb, every cough, every scream, every note, every fuck, every step, every sigh, every word, every second
and believe in God again
for a chance at something like Virginia.
Clarke e. Andros left the family farm behind and moved to the big city to become LA's only tradwife. He teaches literature at Roosevelt High School and works as the fiction editor at The Dry River.