Poetry: Pulling Up Beside My Husband at the Stoplight

Pulling Up Beside My Hus­band at the Stoplight
–Mar­jorie Saiser
From Bones of a Very Fine Hand

We are going to the same place
but we take two cars. Sun­day morning
and there’s not much traffic
so I pull up beside him at the light.
The sun is shin­ing on the road.
Here he is in his car

beside my car,
the curve of his shoulder
through the glass, his face
fresh from a shave, his hair
against the brown of his neck.
He turns and blows me a kiss.
I watch it float on by. I ask
for anoth­er. I think of him
com­ing into the dark bedroom

in the mornings,
the sound of his workboots
across the carpet,
the scent of his face
when he finds me in the covers,
pulls the blan­ket away and
kiss­es my eyebrow,
the cor­ner of my mouth,
tells me the weath­er report
and the pre­cise time of day.
I roll down the window,

whis­tle in my throat,
pull my glass­es crooked on my face,
do my best baboon snorting,
pound the horn
as if it were bread dough.
There’s only the lady in the white Taurus
but he is embar­rassed, glad to see the green.
I’m step­ping on the gas,
catch­ing up, wondering
what I can do at 56th and Calvert.