Separating the Things
take something back, from this void stage of sound
round your eyes when I spoke and you finally heard
round your eyes I avoided, seeing the ground
up from you, ground up glasses, hourglasses of sugar
and salt we sprinkled like snow, in dreams with
promises that seemed so easy, but true
take nothing back, just let the ropes lie, there,
where I let them go, your hands in the air, still
holding on, almost as if the reins and your veins
were the same
horses, one obese, one starving, they remember both of
us, with their dark animal soft eyes, back when we
made noises of passion and froth into each other's
steaming manes, chariot races in open spaces and sun
drifting, afloat, and I've seen you drowning yourself,
filling your stomach and lungs full of salt water, I
know why, my love, but you can't stop, and gulls came for
crumbs and you stared at them, mumbling your monotony
and I don't know what happened, or why, but I'm in a boat, too,
my hair dried and salted into cords over my face, you
scream at the gulls sometimes, but they come back, they
have eaten from your hand, and liked it
sometimes you are bobbing face down in the waves and I
know you must be dead, but you roll over, so I start wearing
black just in case
I miss holding your hand when it wasn't a symbol, a
gesture, an apology, but a necessity, foreplay, an
unconscious reaching, finding and safety
I miss looking in your eyes and understanding the love
we found ourselves warming in, like a home fire, there,
they glazed over like those of the shipwrecked dead,
frozen in terrors you could not describe, shedding dry
salt, filling your hands with glass, snow, crumbs, sugar,
of this I would eat or you would throw all of it at me,
blind, my love, blind
your nightmares ruined your days as you fought them
each night in your head, killing them over and over again,
you wouldn't tell me how, and I didn't want to know
i couldn't stand it coming to bed one night and i tried to
calmly wake you from your drunken sleep, and from there your
fist crashed into my jaw, not waking, not waking,
in the morning you were running late for work, hungover,
running from me as I told you what you did
but shock was nothing new, it's where I lived with you
they told me to pack an emergency bag
offered a place to stay
my golden boy, my golden man
where have you gone?
why are your drowning now?
before we were married, life was a constant debate,
we protested in the snow against foreign policy in El Salvador,
we read our poetry together as we wrote it and with our friends,
our minds were on fire with questions and rage about nuclear arsenals,
and Nietsche became your god, which you didn't like me to say
your professors doted on you, the stack of love letters grew tall
I lit the copal and sage spiral sticks with a wooden
match on fire, so simple and quiet, the scent cleared the
air of alcohol fermented through your skins, your
things, books, photos, papers you wrote in eighth grade,
shirts you wore to work in the cotton mill, to do research,
to school, to be married, to go to the beach, to run and
flowers grew again over the bed with new sheets, and
candles flamed tall in stillness without you, and I slowly
began to breathe, but my heart was shell-shocked cold,
the cats curled up with me and we slept for weeks
wedding pictures, bright sunshine summer day frozen
drops of joy in a lilac bottle i won't open, hidden in a
drawer with old socks and nightmares that my love has
died, dead, a look I felt on my face when you kissed me
married, welcomed me into our future, the
sun shining through the trees around you and the love
we celebrated with friends and family shyly, a photo
snapped, I can't believe how much your face has changed,
and my own, as I watched years thereafter the poisoning
of all that light
when the door was shut between us for real, the ropes
were caught under it, you would come and point at them
and I would take my knife and cut them a little closer
to you, my love I cannot trust, the air is heavy around
you wherever you are, when I remember you I open the
windows wide and light incense and candles in honor of
what little light remains, your hands still fill to throw things
at me but now you don't because your ears are emptying
of their salt, and I have swept the floor of the debris
you have already thrown at me
August 14, ©1992
Amy Jackson