Jill Klein

Larches, Gentling

My husband likes to say you are what you do,
something he read. You are what you do, he says, 

usually referring to something he'd like to do
more of, like sex. I'm more on the you are who you are 

side of things, a being, although I'd like to be
doing more sex. My cat, who is dying, likes to snuggle 

in my armpit near my mammaries. I wonder if it brings back
memories of her 6-month old mother, who had done sex 

somewhere with another feral cat, done birth. She was a cat
whose kittenhood had been cut short. All to say what? 

I fed children with my breasts, which stretched
for a bit. That was thirty years ago, 

that was last week. My breasts are very real,
and somewhat spectacular, no longer “athletic.” 

I preferred when I could run in a regular bra.
Now it’s compression in fuchsia or teal. 

My scar is below my bikini line, back in the day
when I would venture forth, always feeling imperfect 

in my long-legged beautiful body, a beauty that never
appeared in the mirror. Now my body has a flush

of softness—remember the larches’ needles
turning yellow, smelling of grapefruit before they fell?—

gentling my cat as her limbs twitch in a dream.

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Jill Klein holds an MFA from Warren Wilson and a BA from Stanford. In between came years of stay-at-home parenting and a career in commercial banking. Her poems have been published in Bellingham Review, Borderlands, LEON Literary Review, Portland Review, Radar Poetry, Rattle and others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.