Let Me Be the One You Come Running To

Abstract

Let Me Be the One You Come Running To Dana Roeser (bio) I am so grateful today— my lawyer can't yell at meb/c it's Saturday. Neither can my doctor.My face hurts from yelling and I can rest it.I can text Betsy and say I am"on silent retreat." Carrying laundry down thebasement stairs wailing,"I'm so in love with you. … Yooooooou make mefeel brand new." Even though mycrush is in New York, clearly hasn't given mea thought in over a week. I rush upstairs with some version of the cleanlaundry, the rags, the self-sex towels (don't ask), the cloth napkins frommy birthday party—and there on my bed is Tina in 2000strutting around on YouTube. Since my husband left, I pretty well can't figure outwho wants what from whom. My dreamman talks about finding a "significant other" like it's office staff. My husband [End Page 52] wanted to sleep with a man and then a woman andthen another woman. I tried to be a variety of women for my husbandbut I didn't have the dexterity to crawl over himlike an insect. The one he left me forwas a redhead. [End Page 53] Dana Roeser Dana Roeser's fourth book, All Transparent Things Need Thundershirts, won the Wilder Prize at Two Sylvias Press and was published in 2019. Her earlier books won the Juniper Prize and Morse Prize (twice). Recent poems and translations appeared, or are forthcoming, in Guesthouse, The Laurel Review, Barrow Street, The Florida Review, North American Review, Miracle Monocle, Green Mountains Review, and Poetry International Online (PI Online). For more information, please see www.danaroeser.com. Copyright © 2022-2023 Pleiades and Pleiades Press