Beginning with a line by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

My husband is a pale blur. The dark
turns grainy as the blue hour tints our bedroom,
my glasses somewhere near the nightstand’s edge.

He could almost be U2’s guitarist, Edge:
goatee, pale arms, black T-shirt, trademark dark
wool skull cap. Me: his groupie. His hotel room.

Distortion fades. Before he leaves the room,
I feel a toe-squeeze, hear an air-kiss: edge
of day, his way of sugaring the dark,

our portrait in the darkroom of a marriage.

*****

Nicole Caruso Garcia writes: “The inspiration for the tritina ‘Love Poem in Winter with Blackout Shades‘ came from a workshop led by Matt. W. Miller at the 2022 Poetry by the Sea Conference. He had us select one line from among a dozen or so poems by other poets, then use the line use as a springboard and incorporate it somewhere in a new poem of our own. My poem’s first sentence is a line from the middle of Aimee Nezhukamatathil’s ‘I Could Be a Whale Shark‘.” 

‘Love Poem in Winter with Blackout Shades‘ was first published in Crab Orchard Review.

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Crab Orchard Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. Her poetry has received the Willow Review Award and won a 2021 Best New Poets honor. She is an associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Photo: “29/05/2009 (Day 3.149) – We Are Sane” by Kaptain Kobold is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.