The
Memory of Nine Months in Water
The morning is
a door in the moon when his small
cries lick my eyelid.
Open the house to
the window of his face
wet already with wanting to
live. A day
delicious with his fingers in
my heart. But always
with the same
push under the skin of sleep
I disengage my body from
the long dream
of itself.
He loves to see
my face and its grey
swelling. His hands clap
out the magic
I make at cot-side fairy-
black. He has learned to
make himself
the shape of
crucifixion. The signal to lift him into
life
and still
make bodies from milk.
The stairs are hospital steep
and even
a breath could Jack and Jill us. I
cannot touch
the safety over the side
that I carry my son. Each body
must have
only one half
for the heavy heat of children.
We crack
the code of
the long-footed carpet in darkness and
slide down
the wall for
light. It stitches the eye-sill open with
wifely sense.
We come to the cold breath
of the floor.
The faces of time are from
fairy-tales. You must put yourself into
his mouth to
stop the pain
of learning to
speak. You must
solidify angels and mathematics in his wet chain of events.
You must
accept thoughtlessness : don't turn
on the television.
Hundreds of holy
particles glitter from the nipple he
gluts in time.
This pattern of silence
is much like a quilt
a piece donated by many
women all sewing their fingers
to the fabric but only bleeding lightly from lips and eyes.
You collect
dirty syllables in the loving of your pink hands
and the places that will
only be clean when you learn to drown.
My eyes are a stencil
of sleep and the recipe for
tears is a diary in
my kitchen. You'll have to
explain
the stickiness of whispers in the toy-
box words
but you must never throw them
or put them in
your mouth. They are
stones and bones.
And watch for the
edges
of houses
for they can stun you.
In the pictures your fingers
will be sticks and your hair will go on forever.
If I cannot sing
lullabies I will die
but I will have time to go
slowly. Soft apocalypse.
Making up the house's mind. The memory of months
in water nine months
countless housed in
water comes back and continues
to teach you things you needed
to live to learn.
The nursery has a dull pink
rhythm. Listen : sent-i-ment, sent-i-ment.
If you put
on a new dress it will be wet within a breath. A stain spreads over
your breast like the
map of an undiscovered country
traced with a fingertip in damp sand where only the two
of you live.
You are the sealer
of spells and the maker of strange deals in milk and intimidation.
The stairs outside his bedroom croak like souls
when you step on
their uncovered faces. Laying him
down is a
form of breathing and a form
of loss.
Lullaby him with the dream
of sleep
that you will not get as
you listen to him sleeping.
He pulls
the knitted softness into his
mouth. When you come to him
later
his fingers have come out through
the spaces.
©
2000
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