Issue 23

Maggie Blake Bailey

Everyone knows the saint, that is how saints work.

The dancer makes space around herself,

flutters her hands open to glass and ice.

The builder, the builder is mine, my love,

the weight in the bed beside me.

He doesn’t want to be there, begged out

of the last few arrangements— gave me

wrens, gave me deer, anything to distract me.

But tonight, he takes a seat with new friends

and orders a beer he won’t finish.

They have invited him because he listens

kindly, like it matters, and the saint has been rocking

backwards into loneliness.  Solitude is holy.

Solitude is vespers, matins, dawn or any

form of twilight— the silence that sits

next to solace and generally behaves,

but loneliness asks new friends to the bar

and hardens, stammers.

You can’t start a conversation with an admission,

even prayers know that,

so, the saint shares trivia instead:

Did you know there is a type of basil called holy basil?

I ate it tonight in a takeaway container of noodles.

This doesn’t surprise the dancer,

her hands still conjuring ice and clear liquor,

and the builder isn’t there to be surprised, he is there to listen.

The saint goes on and says,

How many things have a holy version of themselves?

All the years I have eaten basil and nothing holy.

How close have I been?  The noodles weren’t even that good.

Now that we meet the dark awake, will it be enough,

this mutual recognition of how the air smells of metal,

the way our bones want to stockpile?

The builder, brought into the bar only because I want him

there, the man I would make an advent calendar of words,

twenty-five doors against the quiet, the builder is thinking only

of the noodles, basil or not, that would taste warm and solid

on the downslope of night, and the dancer is still opening

the space between her bones—

translucent. The glass in her hands shines.

Her breath smells like rosemary and pine, she is drinking gin

and waiting to see how cold behaves,

invited, as it has been, to sit at the bar with the three of them.

She doesn’t worry if the ice is holy, she isn’t lonely

in her body made of bitter enamel.

All three of them are ready to leave, holding on to their hungers.

But I am plaiting wreaths of holy basil.  I am writing my own stays

against the early night waiting.