by Tiff M. Z. Lee
When you’re married to a giant who is a farm, you don’t get time to rest. By the time the sun rises over the slope of his shoulders, you’ve collected eggs from the ducks and milk from the goats. You make a hearty omelette, garnished with tomatoes you jarred last summer and stored in the crook of his right elbow.
Afterwards, you hitch the plough to your old, loyal mule and head to the fields, working your way in and out of your husband’s ribs. Very occasionally, he erupts into a continental wheeze, sending mule, plough, and farmer flying over the hills.
When the evening grows cooler, you hike all the way to his littlest toe, where you’ve left the sheep to graze since last spring. You know they are safe, here on the edge of the world, but it calms you to pet the wooly beasts anyway. You listen to their bleats and baas until nightfall, when you return to the warm little ranch house you built on your husband’s cheek and fall asleep to his in-out breaths.
On certain Sundays, you tend to the garden you’ve planted just for yourself, deep in the spiral of his ear. You whisper encouragements into the flowerbed for only your beloved to hear.
Tiff M. Z. Lee is a Canadian living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she contemplates fairytales and sea creatures. She can be found online at tiffmzlee.com.
Kelli Lage is a poetry reader for Bracken Magazine. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Lage is the author of Early Cuts and I’m Glad We Did This. Her work has appeared in Maudlin House, The Lumiere Review, Welter Journal, and elsewhere.
Unstamatic 