Promise

In the salmon of dawn,
when my heart burrowed tight,
small as a bird quivering
into the curve of its wing,
and the corridor was the expanse
of too many countries to name,
the two of you stood silent
as promise at the end.

And there, in that swamp, I walked on my own
through the weight of my body as nurses smiled pink,
clapping health to cheer me on.

And I knew myself as infant,
starting over,
again.

a fragment from a move

and that is why, she says, to absolutely no one at all

i am selling the bed and throwing out the dishes

and the traces of our dinners and mouths and spices and laughter all shoved

down with bad jokes and forever secrets into a box

into a box i now leave

on the sidewalk marked

FREE

in giant black letters, because yes,

the moving marker is in my hand

and the past is splayed wide open
for anyone who walks by

and happens to want a piece

and this is why i watch

as the every-day-at-this-same-time-again woman

takes 2 plates, a green-rimmed bowl, a few tattered books

before the dawn

why thank you i say around the pushed-back curtain

thank you and good bye

to worn out boots in the snow

to the silence before the coming train

to those meals and the first winter and the dark, bald branches like hunger
clamoring through the sky

             

and to the rush of the charles

blue-black-slapping 

frozen wild

to the tempo
of thank you, she's marked FREE,
on the sidewalk
the story's there.

                                                --- 2003/2012