[You ask me to be honest]

You ask me to be honest
about what it’s like living with you.
You expect me to continue fighting.

Suddenly,

I cannot open the pickle jar
so it sits tucked-in by a pink plaid rag
until I need the rag.

At church, a woman opens my stall.
“I’m half-daydreaming,” she says and covers me with the door.

To half-daydream
is to half-open
a pickle jar.

I re-learn how to make coffee for one.

            You had written, “Sittin’ by the river,”
            expecting me to find you
            gone.

The yellow note sticks all winter,
smiles
like a tooth of light.

Karolina Zapal is an itinerant poet, essayist, translator, and author of two books: Notes for Mid-Birth (Inside the Castle, 2019) and Polalka (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018). As an immigrant and activist writer, she writes frequently about her native Poland, languages, borders, and women’s rights. She works at Westfield State University.