In this story I fall in love with both men named Adam.
I am prone to sinus infections.
Adam works in a tarp factory.
The other Adam keeps a jar of ten-year-old water on his shelf.
I mix antibiotics with whiskey and wear braids in my hair.
The jar of water is a gift he tells me.
Adam wants to have sex all the time.
But Adam prefers to sleep.
There is a cat and sometimes a dog.
Adam’s piano takes four hours to tune.
The piano tuner’s wife is a fortuneteller.
Adam gives me paperback novels from thrift stores.
We drink margaritas that smell like Lysol.
I move into Adam’s house after I stop having sex with Adam.
The fortuneteller says he is a crab and he is a goat and I am a ram.
There is something growing in the jar.
I have not spoken to Adam in over a year.
Rams scare crabs but crabs scare easily.
Adam prefers to work twenty-four hours a day.
The cat brings fleas into my bed.
I paint the fireplace white.
The fortuneteller says goats and rams will fight like cats and dogs.
That’s what you can expect.
Antibiotics and sleeping pills.
I ask about the jar.
What is living inside.
Adam says it was a gift and Adam doesn’t throw away gifts.
The piano weighs a thousand pounds.
Adam is not a replacement for Adam.
Rams eat goats and goats eat crabs.
There is no dignity in anonymity.
What can you expect.
In this story I cannot remember his faces.
In this story all I see is the face.
It is a gift.
{To read more of this piece, please purchase Issue 39.2.}
Kelli Anne Noftle’s first collection of poetry, I Was There for Your Somniloquy, was selected by Rae Armantrout for the 2010 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. She lives in Los Angeles.
