Courtship

This is the story about the castle cut off from the town,
about the way the shadow of the kitchen table moves

when I look at it too long. It might almost have
breath. This is about the voices

in the spoons, the strange language
of cutlery I set myself to learn.

It passes the afternoon. I’ll live here
until I’m tired of it. Then I’ll allow him in.

Enter, Beast, I’ll say, but: Beast, hide from me

while you’re in my house. I’m not used to company.
I turn off the lights to make the search last longer.

In the dark I have no beauty. When I find him,
he speaks to me

in words I know already: lonely,
eat. The two of us

alone with our forks and our fortress.

***

Sarah Kortemeier holds an MFA from the University of Arizona; she currently serves as a library assistant at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Folio, and Spiral Orb. She lives in Tucson.