Sometimes you want a sandwich and I don’t,
so go make yourself a sandwich without me.
It’s fine. It doesn’t have to say anything
about our relationship or our desire to be
known or why you think you’re turning
into your father or who will win
in November or where we will go
when we die.
You are at work, and I’m paraphrasing
a sex therapist from a reel I couldn’t possibly find
if I tried, but it felt like scripture
when I scrolled into it. Sometimes validation reads
like poetry. Turns out it was just math—
the algorithm knew that you
are always hungry.
But I have to ring the dinner bell for
my own cells. I wake up and decide that today
is a sandwich day and 14 hours from now, I will eat
a sandwich, so I’d better start grinding wheat, whipping
egg whites into mayo, pickling whatever
I have on hand. I am a homesteader
of libido. Off-grid. Self-sufficient.
I will live off the land.
Sometimes though, you saunter potent
through the door, sun-kissed cowboy in a suit,
You say something dark and funny. Big man singing
Kristen Chenoweth—I couldn’t be happier. You do not
put your keys in the key drawer. You leave
them in your pocket (you’ll look for them later). I push
my hand in and draw them out, inhale
deep and neurons fire, and I want
to cut the crusts off
right here in the kitchen, right here
on the counter.
Samantha Strong Murphey
Samantha Strong Murphey has an MFA in poetry from NYU and has been supported by Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Vermont Studio Center. She teaches writing at UT-Dallas. Her work has been published by Rattle, Crab Creek Review, and North American Review and is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, RADAR, and SWWIM.
