jamie tews

Weekend Wedding Singer

Saturday night my boyfriend will be standing in a suit
with a guitar strung across his body,
singing about rosebuds and soft rain
and not knowing what love is until you know,
but right now we are talking about death.
His bedroom ceiling fan moving our words
through the air like paper planes
and death is this thing
no one’s prepared for
and nothing returns from.

A kid he knew in high school committed suicide the other day.
He doesn’t look at me while he says this,
keeps his head turned slightly away
so the hairs that curl up at the nape of his neck
tickle my nose, and yes,
I say, it’s sad how some people know sorrow,
yes, he says, some people
don’t have anyone in their corner,
and yes, I say, that’s true.

I tell him I don’t know much about sadness,
only how sometimes it asks me to strip
and crouch in the shower or
stand in the street to watch the sky.

He says he doesn’t know the difference
between being alone and being lonely,
but I tell him they go down the same way,
clawing at the throat as they sink into the body,
writhing in the belly as we learn
to heal. I want to ask
what parts of him are healing,
but instead I ask for something good.

What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, I ask.
He smiles and for a moment I think
he might say me, but when he doesn’t
I am glad. He names a Canadian lake,
one that sparkles even when it’s not sunny.
How beautiful, I say, and then we are silent,
still thinking about sorrow
and death but also, now, the lake.

The King Size Reese’s Cup

When my father told me about drinking,
he said, it’s just what we do,
slipping nips of rum into coffee,
soda, anything,

everything has always been circling back
to my father.

The first time he gave me a drink,
hot water and fireball
in a glass cup,
he forgot to warn me
about the heat. 

The second was rum, a sip
from the half-pint he kept
in the flap of his jacket,
for you, he said. I was twelve,
we were at the neighbor’s
Halloween party. Mom left
early to check the candy bowl
on our stoop, and my father

wasn’t wearing a costume
but was drunk, scared
of where mom might be stopping
on the way home. Love

is what ruins most people,
its absence or
inadequacy. My father
made a toast to both,

a Reese’s cup in one hand, his bottle
in the other, drink,
he said, leaning into the neighbor’s table,
it’s what we do on nights like this.