As the Sirens Sing
 
I slide out from between the warm sheets
gently lifting his heavy arm off of me
and tiptoe through the strange apartment
to find the kitchen table
and begin to write
of some moment the night
stirred in me
 
Maybe a graze of the nipple
or the way a shirt draped the chair
the singing of the sirens
mixing with the echo of the moans
the moonlight passing through
the glass from the bottle on the nightstand
the way the sound of him snoring fuses
with the smell of Tide to become almost corporeal
 
And I will remember these things
long after I have forgotten his name

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Jodie Baeyens is a professor at American Military University. She was deposited in Arizona from Manhattan, against her will, and now lives in a rural farming community writing poetry, drinking expensive coffee and cheap red wine.