Dear Stutter [“There’s so much of you that I don’t understand”]
There’s so much of you that I don’t understand.
I have B-days. I have D-days. I’ll stutter on an M-word,
& then on another, & another. It’s like
you’re a child rolling a snowball. Sometimes
this will go on for weeks, & then suddenly
it’s as though the sun comes out & you disappear.
You are the weather, all wind & hours. I stutter
on a Wednesday, but I don’t on a Thursday.
I stutter when I argue, but I don’t when I sing—
a surprising fact that would be useful if this
were West Side Story. I don’t when I whisper,
& I don’t when I curse, but you dwell in the expanse
in between. It’s Easter, & cyclists spin down
the road in Lycra & wraparound sunglasses.
Children in bunny ears hunt for eggs, chattering
like sparrows, while a group of elderly in straw hats
stages a picnic on the basketball court, removing
strawberries & feta from their coolers. I know
you are here somewhere between the green
of the caterpillar & the green of the grass. You are
always here because I never know when you will
happen. Saboteur. Roulette wheel. Camouflage.
You wait until the end of the week when my glasses
lie on the table & the coffee is a half-moon
at the bottom of the cup, & then all of a sudden
it’s as though I’m speaking underwater. If I read
the same passage aloud again & again, you
appear a little less each time, another surprising
phenomenon that speech-language pathologists
call “the adaptation effect.” A literary journal
once wanted a recording of a poem I’d written,
& I dragged my pillows & comforter into
the closet for sound insulation, & after several takes,
crouched over my laptop, I landed on a fluent one.
Afterwards, I was so ashamed that I had betrayed you.
When the same journal accepted another poem
years later, I was determined to leave you be.
My stomach heavy as a wet towel, I brought the pillows
this time into the bathroom, & did one take.
Which version, though, is my voice? The one that’s
bunched or the one that’s smooth? Outside
daffodils appear on the lawns. Some are yellow cups
on yellow saucers; some are yellow cups on white.
A couple poses for photographs before the water.
In one they press their foreheads together, their noses
inches away from each other. In another, one stands
in front of the other, as though they shared a single body.
Even the sun as it sinks behind them through the clouds,
turning from lemon to cantaloupe, has phases.
Source: Poetry (December 2025)