The Quantum Physics of Dressing

I’m pulling up a lake 
from another place 

as I lift my jeans, button 
my top and become

your shirt, a hue between 
butter’s silk, fruit 

close to the core 
of pineapple. The sun

hides, and I imagine you:
coffee, eggs, turning

in your white robe to glance
the paper. I hear your voice

as it takes a couple
tries to clasp 

my necklace. I slip 
my feet into the future, 

warm my hands into deep 
pockets and head out 

in the rain. You are
showering by now, 

stepping onto cool tiles
of light, into the shades

of your closet. Love, 
like a thrust of a single 

particle, can exist in two 
places at the same 

time. My body 
near a river, your body 

near a lake. In either 
place, apart, we wait. 

A made bed. The night-
stand. A filled oil lamp.

Janine Certo is the author of O Body of Bliss, winner of the Longleaf Press Book Contest in Poetry (Longleaf Press, 2023), Elixir, winner of both the New American Poetry Prize and the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (New American Press and Bordighera Press, 2021), and In the Corner of the Living, runner-up for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award (2017). She is an associate professor at Michigan State University.

Appears In

Cagibi Issue 24