Man and Woman
I. The Room at the End of Day
They enter it, to strip
and pick at the pages of books they do not read
together, the day clumsy between them, their unvoiced
seeds balled in the bowed threads of sheets. Naked,
they brush teeth, rinse and wipe the foamy paste away,
swish with Listerine, kiss so that
only the puckered ridges graze like old women, they touch
feet, a tough-skinned embrace, as if to stem the heat
wandering out from the bed, and turn, each reaching for
a lamp switch to make the room dark.
If there is a moon only one of them notices.
II. The Dream
A whistle at the back of his throat
is evidence of something heavier, a voice
breeding in the esophagus. A woman resides
in the branches of a tree. She looks
over a valley of fields and gulleys
and low hills. Ice hails down on her
through the branches like coins. When he speaks
a cloud of white flies balloons
from his mouth and scatters
in the air like the pollen of dandelion.
III. The Room at Daybreak
He opens his eyes. He is turned to her.
She watches him struggle to focus, reaches for
his cheek, traces lines that have bound the debris of years.
Her fingers are warm still from the way all bodies guard
the blood’s heat during sleep.
She carefully rubs the inner corner
of his left eye with her index finger, pulls the sleep down
his skin to her thumb, rolls it between her fingers and flicks it
into the day. She says, "I dreamed
about us.” She pulls his arm, places his hand
on her breast, kisses his eye, his mouth:
He kisses her shoulder, gives himself to it as though it were
all he ever hoped for. “I couldn’t breathe,” she says.
They touch everywhere, until the bottom sheet comes loose
and their bodies breathe.
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Originally published in Prairie Schooner, 2016
