I thought I should write this down, since your ear
is a vagina and you might not hear it if I said it out loud,
she wrote, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sweet
or funny or was just angry with me, mostly I was confused
by the vagina metaphor and thought it was a little extreme,
I mean, was a vagina the first thing that came to mind
when she thought of my ear? Which ear was she talking about?
By then I was fingering my right ear thinking it wasn’t
all that different from a vagina, I guess I wouldn’t be so shocked
if I took off her pants and saw an ear where her vagina
should be and took off her hat and saw two vaginas
where her ears should be, ears and vaginas were closer
in family than, say, vaginas and toes, and she often caressed
my ear with her tongue the way one might caress
a vagina, I’m not saying I climaxed but the possibility
was there. I looked back at previous messages between us
and saw I’d told her I have a cat’s vagina for an ear,
which briefly clarified things until it didn’t: a cat’s vagina?
Somehow there was context for this, possibly we were
laughing about saying “a pussy’s pussy” in bed,
or I was laughing about it while she and my large male cat
regarded me with some rather serious reservations,
in any case going back in time translating phrase to phrase
didn’t make things any clearer, let alone cleaner,
between us, cats and ears and vaginas were coming
to stand for our entire relationship! We’d never developed
a vocabulary for tenderness, I saw, which was hurting us
now that she wanted to say how she really felt,
or at least felt it was time to say how she really felt,
one day before the new year. On New Year’s Day
I woke up early to rinse all the extra glasses we’d used
for our party, careful not to clink them too much
as she slept face-down on the bed, still in her little black
dress, her long, cool jewelry tangled in her hair.
I started packing for my trip, jamming sweaters and socks
and scarves into my suitcase, and when she finally
pushed herself off her pillow, looking everywhere but at me,
I put on her Peruvian hat, posing in her earflaps
and braids, and she said, You’re covering your vaginas.