Lisa Barnett

Seesaw Girls

Kissing in Cars

"Too late to kiss in cars,” my husband said,

“we had our chances years ago with others.”

And so we drove on down the road instead.

I thought then of those dashboard dolls that kiss

and bob as magnets make them. What kind of lovers

are we who cannot match their liplocked ardor,

nor ever hope to reach such mindless bliss?

No matter. Staying together’s so much harder

than kisses would suggest; it’s not romance

but trouble that will bind us—the single force

we can’t resist—lost jobs, sick kids, mischance…

the hairpin turns that keep our lives on course.

It’s true that we are going nowhere fast,

but that’s the catch that makes this marriage last. 

Using her superior weight,

my sister, a too-lively eight,

grounded the seesaw on her side

while I, four, elevated, cried.

She grinned, earthbound, from far below

as I discovered vertigo.

At last she let me down to run

away from such uneven fun.

Back then, we shared a pivot point,

our ups and downs remained conjoint,

a zero-sum of win and lose

through all a childhood’s small news.

Still now, grown up, we rise and fall

in our familiar protocol—

a push me-pull you, shifting state

that we two yet perpetuate.

What if we moved beyond imbalance

and learned to merge our separate talents?

Might we walk, equal, through the world—

no longer rival, seesaw girls?

Lisa Barnett’s poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Measure, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, the anthologies Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets and Extreme Sonnets, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbooks The Peacock Room (Somers Rocks Press) and Love Recidivus (Finishing Line Press).