Nicole Siciliano is a public relations professional working in financial services in New York City. She turns to creative writing and poetry as a hobby  to rediscover the softness and vulnerability of everyday life that can oftentimes be overlooked by its mania. She is most often inspired by the power of the shared experience. A graduate of Stony Brook University and New York University, She currently resides in Astoria, Queens.

Watermarks

My Lover holds me
in the middle of the night

like he knows there are ghosts
lurking in the closet
and he’s waiting to hear the doorknob turn.

But Lover,
I have never been good
at folding dirty laundry,
or neatly hanging the past
like a heretic

So, I just wear it like a necklace
of baby teeth,

I hum it like the music box
filled with the family secrets

And we just live like that—with it

Like the dying plants on the windowsill,
the stale wine in the refrigerator,
the not-quite right hum of the radiator

Lover,

there is nothing that will snatch you
in the middle of the night.

There are no waiting skeletons
to dance with.

There is just the creak
of my own bones in the morning,

and the beer bottle watermarks
of a faraway life

on our coffee table.

[image: from X-Ray Portraits | Ayako Kanda and Mayuka Hayashi]