Incarnadine (4 page)

Not far beyond his touch,

a wind shakes a dusting of sunlight

onto the edges of pears.

I’d rather think some things are like this.

The water’s green edge dissolves

into cerulean, cerulean pearls

into clouds; the girl’s unsandaled feet

into uncut fringes of grass—

I don’t need to explain
, he says

(his sleeves swelling in a nudge of air)

—
but the highest call of history
,

it changes your heart.

She looks down: her finger in her book.

There are only a few lines in the newspaper: her grade, his age, when the police arrived. J. calls to say he doesn’t believe the girl.
Girls that age
, he says—
you know how that goes. Hey, if there’s a trial, you could be a witness.

What kind of witness?

Character witness.

Yes I knew him. One summer we lounged in the backyard sun and listened to songs about what would be nice. On the swing, on the lawn, I posed for him, leaned my head against the picnic table. That was when I did not have enough, could not have enough looking at.

That summer he carried his sketchpad everywhere, and on those slow, humid afternoons, I felt him elongate, shade, and blur. Above us the sky was like a white rush of streetlights, and I wanted to be nothing but what he shaped in each moment—

I closed my eyes, felt the sunlight on my thighs. To be beheld like that—it felt like glittering.

Stone soldier, it’s okay now.

I’ve removed my rings, my watch, my bracelets.

I’m allowed, brave girl,

to touch you here, where the mail covers your throat,

your full neck, down your shoulders

to here, where raised unlatchable buckles

mock-fasten your plated armor.

Nothing peels from you.

Your skin gleams like the silver earrings

you do not wear.

Above you, museum windows gleam October.

Above you, high gold leaves flinch in the garden,

but the flat immovable leaves entwined in your hair to crown you

go through what my fingers can’t.

I want you to have a mind I can turn in my hands.

You have a smooth and upturned chin,

cold cheeks, unbruisable eyes,

and hair as grooved as fig skin.

It’s October, but it’s not October

behind your ears, which don’t hint

of dark birds moving overhead,

or of the blush and canary leaves

emptying themselves

in slow spasms

into shallow hedgerows.

Still bride of your own armor,

bride of your own blind eyes,

this isn’t an appeal.

If I could I would let your hair down

and make your ears disappear.

Your head at my shoulder, my fingers on your lips—

as if the cool of your stone curls were the cool

of an evening—

as if you were about to eat salt from my hand.

Sleeper, still untouched by

gravity, invisible

for the stone, I cannot

hear you shift in its dark

center. How many centuries

since the first girl—pressing hand

against stone—hardly meaning to

make an inside—

roused you? The stone had no

emptiness, and her body no

emptiness until she felt you

move under her palm, her steady

pulse. Already flesh was something to

stir you, something to make you

true. Stone-dove, untouched

by thistles, moths,

listen now

my hand is open.

Spirit who knows me, I do not feel you

fall so far in me,

do not feel you turn in my dark center.

My mother is sick, and you

cannot help her.

My beautiful, moon-faced mother is sick

and you sleep in the dark edges of her shadow.

Spirit made to

know me, is this your weight

in my throat, my

chest, the breath heavy so I hardly

breathe it?

I do not believe in the beauty of falling.

Over and over in the dark I tell myself

I do not have to believe

in the beauty of falling

though she edges toward you,

saying your name with such steadiness.

I sit winding blue tape around my wrists

to keep my hands from falling.

Holy Ghost, I come for you today

in this overlit afternoon as she

picks at the bread with her small hands,

her small rough hands,

the wide blue veins that have always been her veins

winding through them.

Ghost, what am I

if I lose the one

who’s always known me?

Spirit, know me.

Shadow, are you here

splintering into the bread’s thick crust as it

crumbles into my palms, is that

you, the dry cough in her lungs, the blue tape on my wrists.

The dark hair that used to fall over her shoulders.

Fragile mother, impossible spirit, will you fall so far

from me, will you leave me

to me?

To think it

is the last hard kiss, that seasick

silence, your bits of breath

diffusing in my mouth—

But give me the frost of your name

in my mouth, give me

spiny fruits and scaly husks—

give me breath

to say aloud to the breathless clouds

your name, to say

I am, let me need

to say it and still need you

to give me need, to make me

into what is needed, what you need, no

more than that I am, no more

than the stray wind on my neck, the salt

of your palm on my tongue, no more

than need, a neck that will bend

lower to what I am, so

give me creeping, give me clouds that hang

low and sweep the blue of the sky

to its edges, let me taste the edges, the bread-colored clouds,

here I am, give me

thumb and fingers, give me only

what I need, a turn here

to turn what I am

into I am, what your name writ in clouds

writ on me

—how her loose curls float

above the silver fish as she leans in

to pluck its eyes.

You died just hours ago.

Not suddenly, no. You’d been dying so long

nothing looked like itself: from your window,

fishermen swirled sequins;

fishnets entangled the moon.

Now the dark rain

looks like dark rain. Only the wine

shimmers with candlelight. I refill the glasses

as we raise a toast to you

as so-and-so’s daughter—elfin, jittery as a sparrow—

slides into another lap

to eat another pair of slippery eyes

with her soft fingers, fingers rosier each time,

for being chewed a little.

If only I could go to you, revive you.

You must be a little alive still.

I’d like to put the girl in your lap.

She’s almost feverishly warm, and she weighs

hardly anything. I want to show you how

she relishes each eye, to show you

her greed for them.

She is placing one on her tongue,

bright as a polished coin—

What do they taste like? I ask.

Twisting in my lap, she leans back sleepily.

They taste like eyes, she says.

—into the 3
^rd
second, the girl

holds on, determined not to meet his gaze—

she swerves her blue sleeve,

closes down the space,

while his eyes are intent, unwilling

to relent and

late into the 5
^th
second they are still

fighting on, their feet sinking into

the slippery grass—

Approaching the 6
^th
second

he can’t repeat the sweeping in

and each time he tries to clear

the way to her thorn-brown eyes by the gesture of a hand

it is easily blocked by the turn

of her cheek.

By the 8
^th
second she is still repelling

every attempt, still deflecting (you can see

the speed, the skillful knee action)

his gaze. And she must know (she has to think

every second, there’s no letting up)

this is only

delay, but the delay

is what she has

before his expert touch

swings in, before

she loses her light, clean edges, before she

loses possession—

before they look at each other.

Bellagio, Italy