the rose water that sits on my desk by Karen Breen

Rose in Pose 23 by Rajesh Misra

the rose water that sits on my desk
next to iris and periwinkle
in a glittered, jelly bulb
jiggled slightly when your husband
fisted the downstairs wood paneling.

a bathroom that should be pretty, a milk-glass tub,
its vertebrae down the middle a cowhide:

the door is yours now.
you’re the house with the perforations in the walls now.

and somewhere between Oklahoma and Japan,
his knees under a desk of recycled air,
half of me pleads, via phone call,
to erase sorrow “or roses are—”