Jennifer Jordan
Sunday Morning
My body is in the kitchen of the
house I live in without you. Berries sink
into batter, pancakes on the griddle.
Air bubbles up, the heat escaping leaves
a hole. I started a new life without
you one hundred forty eight days ago.
Our daughter pours syrup on her plate.
Berries burst each time she digs her fork in.
Every so often, I think goddamn every
folk singer who wrote my life story before
I lived it. I should have listened to them.
I used to think about this all the time,
how I left you on a Thursday morning.
Sometimes my mind yearns for the
picture I created in my head, the people
we weren’t. You never said come home.
Not that I would have. I ran from our
house to my mother’s home. Nights,
I slept on her spare bed with our
daughter nestled snug beside me.
Jennifer Jordan reads “Sunday Morning”
Jennifer Jordan is a writer and an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, where she is a librarian who supports faculty researching Open Educational Resources. Her creative writing, which includes poems and essays, has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Sonora Review, Cutbank, This American Life, Coachella Review, and others. Her scholarly writing has appeared in journals such as Open Praxis and In the Library with the Leadpipe.