SPACE BREAK
She was serious about this, breaking loose,
Spending twenty bucks (five more than we’d been hooked),
Scoring three joints’ worth of dried cannabis blossom
That crumbled grittily as she rolled.
That’s a lot for someone living on
Her savings and her under-achieving husband’s
Pay, until her thesis is written,
Defended and set on a shelf to collect dust…
She hoped this substance would, she hoped,
Crack routines grown staid as bureaucracy.
Staring cross-eyed at the glowing end before my nose,
The stubborn match flame touched the twisted
Paper’s tip and blinked my smoke-wet eyes. I counted
Half a dozen years since we’d gotten really loose,
And grit crackled. Trying not to cough,
We were novices again holding each inhalation,
And I felt (or did I hear?) my head hinges pop,
Stretching my jaw wordlessly, and finding
The stub too close to lip to light.
I stood fondling a hardball-sized squash by the sink,
Running my fingers over its tough green skin
Wondering what life was like in its seeds’ dark cavities.
She wanted to know . . . I tried to say—how, what
This vegetable’s inner space must know
Our space, how it must,
Share terrarium understanding of contain-
Ment, how there must be air inside, but not
Air as we know it
We laughed
Until laughter filled out small kitchen, laughter
Like we hadn’t laughed since our marriage
Had gone Chinese, with bureaus
For every piece of life and every feeling pressed
And folded like shirts in a chest-of-drawers,
Packed tightly as ancient rules whose origin had diffused
Invisibly over fifteen years—fif-teen
Orange-webbed years, suspended inside the tight
Round space our laughter crowded, laughter
Now bursting loose from
Long-tailed dragon-guarded dresser,
Now cracked, now split open in one joint’s time.
[*Note: this poem is featured in an upcoming film on Don Moss’s life and work, premiering in 2026.]
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More from Don Moss: Don Moss’s Breakfast Stories: “White Paper”, POETRY: Don Moss’s “Greenroom” (1998), POETRY: Cards At The Center