Salt Licks

Salt Licks

When I pour the crystals over my stew
she says I use too much. She says
my arteries will harden like stone, and
I'll look back, one day, to find that
my blood is frozen in the pillar I've become.

She frowns when I relate my childhood flights
down through the cholla cactus and Joshua trees
to the goat pen, with its juniper shade, where
I ran my pink tongue over the salty-smooth
depressions mined into their crystalline cakes.

"Why would anyone want to lick salt and goat spit?"
She shudders at the thought and edges
the salt shaker out of my reach. I want to tell her
that my craving carries over from the quest
to weigh my worth against its bitter taste.

So I start to stutter, trying to describe
the palimpsest scars of a father's belt-buckle-bite,
and she weeps with my frustration. And I lean in
to kiss away the dampness on her cheek,
already savoring the salt caught in her tears.