Sean Patrick Hill
CURING
There are things that could save us, undoubtedly. My mother’s spider plant has lived longer than I have, imagine. A woman I loved once, who taught me to season a cast iron skillet, to seal it from the weathering of water, air, said, with the right care things might last, but they didn’t. The aloe you bought just after our wedding, think how close it came to rotting when your father watered it half to death. It survived, but still resists equation to what has been growing between us. The jade we bought when our daughter was born is far more truthful, the litter of leaves, the empty limbs, the house it can’t seem to adapt to. If only more sunlight were a cure. But such cures are more complex than oil cloth and shortening, than a forgiving morning. The fact is one wants things to preserve themselves, given our natural inclinations to neglect, or the occasional, impulsive mistake.
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Sean Patrick Hill is the author of two books of poetry, The Imagined Field and Interstitial. His poems are forthcoming in Cimarron Review and Blackbird and appeared recently in DIAGRAM, CutBank, Drunken Boat, LIT, Harpur Palate, and West Wind Review. He is currently an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College, and has received awards and grants from the Vermont Studio Center and the Elizabeth George Foundation. He lives in Kentucky.
