"Undercover"
She lies on her side, full fetal, worms her skin into sheets
as a river wears into its own canyon. Her knees buttress
my back; she rises as a flood, uncloaks us, kisses the crevasse
between my rib cage and hip--recovers, rewraps.
Her father cradles her broken wrist in corrugated
palms. They wait in the library, scrutinized
by bindings of her books. Paramedics roll
his body, blanket defended, through the hall.
Dust collects on floors, counters, her diary.
She cannot write on unruled paper, needs creases
where flesh bends and folds. Television is conversation--
language lapping banks of smooth silence. She props
against pillows, shreds tissue like pulling petals
from sunflowers. She unwinds, burrows to the hollow
core of the roll, flings it aside, surprised
by the absence of seeds.
She sleeps on top of the covers, launders sheets each week,
never exposes them once she's insulated the bed.
She would rather lift her own toenails
than raise any thread of that fabric.
Periods of wakefulness pepper each night. She soothes
by tracing snakes on my back. I quiver as she stirs
electron streams in my bare wires. Sometimes
I'm awake, sometimes she wakes me.
On the third anniversary of his death,
she perches on the sofa--any bed feels
liquid, able to drown; the quilted spread
now her ocean bottom.
Sixteen years they wore life preservers, streaming
in the sea of diabetes. She could swim underwater
but could not breathe, had never learned to crawl
across the surface. Until that night, he kept her afloat.
She pounds his chest, screams at her own
imagination. He has burned out while she slept.
They are both naked in the morning dark.
Bedcovers litter the carpet like dust.
She kisses my shoulder blade, whispers "how can you
be real?" She sleeps naked on sex-damp linen. Tomorrow,
she will hand wash them, cover the mattress, smooth
the wrinkles, backstroke the place where he and I will lie.
© 2005 Steve Williams
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