At dawn, people  
whose stomachs have gone soft  
with age walk their dogs. A few  
jog. The mourning doves talk  

to each other the way they do,  
like they’re calling out to God  
from underwater. This is the time  
of day I feel at all  
like myself: quiet, unfettered, almost  

autonomous, looking out  
the front window, taking inventory  
of my small plot of universe, a universe  
that has scheduled for this week 

the neighborhood’s bulk  
garbage pick-up. The Lawsons  
dragged a seven-foot, headless Santa Claus  
and a pink toilet out to the curb.  

The Flynns pruned their live  
oak back, its enormous pile of limbs  
blocking the sidewalk. Last night,  
after the baby was asleep, as we hauled  

bags of grass cuttings and dead  
leaves to the street, the husband  
suggested sex  
isn’t the only way  

to be intimate with each other.  
What he was trying to say, I think, was,  
I just want to talk  
about why you don’t want to fuck  

as much as me.  
But I heard: Bitch. Bitch, you  
bitch. Give me what  
you owe me or I’ll make you.  

So, this is who I am now—  

just another soft-bodied woman  
hoping the arbitrary newness  
of a morning will restore her  
from what she has become:  

something filthy baring its teeth  
in an alley, staring down the blaze  
of a flashlight, guarding a crust of bread  
with its life.