Our Girls

In the desert, we raise chickens. Six hens. He calls them “our girls,” and I like the way he looks building the coop out of scrap wood. His tools more plentiful than his clothes. I wonder when I will forget these details: shirt stuck with sweat to the small of his back, the feel of chicken wire unwieldly in my hands, our girls dirt-bathing near an aloe patch—feathers ruffled with the fine sandy dust. I wonder when I will forget his body: the way it moved between house and coop, spine well-stacked, chest open to the clear blue Tucson skies.


Leaving Arizona

We don’t mean to. But he never really meant to arrive either. Was my impulse, my desire to wend through saguaros crowned in white blossoms, wildflowers scattered in spring bloom. Orange in its sublime iterations: California poppy, desert globemallow. March in Tucson means cholla flashing fuchsia beside sidewalks, means long weekends among rock and dust. Means me full up of illusions: loves me / loves me not. Not petals but things that happen at night. Fights, I call them.

But there is no fight left in me, just something like obsession. So fucking much, I can’t face the days without his approval. His wild accusations of imperfection. The eggs we color pastel in April. The chickens—our girls—we give away. By May, we’re gone from there, leaving my desert, leaving Arizona.