Upon Attending a Yoga Class with My Husband
It’s a basic class, blankets and a dozen grey heads
on pillows, and soon he’s snoring slightly. I reach over
and tap his ribcage, and we giggle in the back of the room,
our bellies trembling, the lights low.
When we reach to twist our imaginary light bulbs on and off,
I watch his hands, concentrate on them instead of breathing,
how long his fingers, how deep his palms, how shocking
that he has a body, that he exists separate from me,
from how I think of him as husband, from his laugh, his job,
his methods for loading the dishwasher, the way he touches me when I sleep.
We’re on the floor moving like elephants, like cows, like our cats,
like the very deliberate and slow. His left hand stutters
when he realizes it should be his right. It feels like kindergarten,
like somehow the two of us, who are eleven years apart,
have skipped backwards for an instant, joined each other
on the magic rug for stretching and naptime.
Then we’re standing and lifting our arms high-high over our heads
and I can see his belly button, his small belly button, and he is
so young and I am so young and we’re both imagining we’re floating
in shiny bright bubbles of light.
Deja Earley’s poems, fiction, and essays have previously appeared or are forthcoming in journals like Arts and Letters, Borderlands, and Utne Reader. She has received honors in several writing contests, including the 2008 Joan Johnson Award in poetry,and the 2004-2005 Parley A. and Ruth J. Christensen Award. She was awarded first place in the 2011 Eugene England Memorial Personal Essay Contest, and she had several poems included in Fire in the Pasture. She completed a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi and she now lives in Tucson, Arizona.
If you would like to submit your work to Psaltery & Lyre, please check out the P&L Submissions Page.