The Sleeping Wall

The Sleeping Wall
6
Winter lake. Snow. Glint of blades. Philip skates ahead. Michael’s mittened hands. They
are currents swept to where sleeping ducks slip their heads beneath wings on summer
nights. Where fish spawn transparent eggs.
Minds overtaken by bodies, they push forward without thought of what will one day end.
Snow on the bell tower of grinding wheels. Ice, pink in morning light.
7
A rusty laundry carousel. Broken clothes pins on a gray rope. She watches her sons run
against the wind, shirts flattened against their chests. With a thud, Philip kicks the ball. It
rises and they chase it, stomping over packed sand, hands swiping the hair blowing across
their foreheads. She bites down hard on her cigarette filter. A robin breaks free from a tree.
8
Wreckage of a winter intruder. Overflowing ashtrays, hearth littered with beer bottle
glass. Blood trail to cellar, delicate and brown. They find a deer on its side. She retrieves
the hacksaw from the boathouse. Philip watches James from the stairs, hands over his
mouth.
She stands on the dock with Michael. James and Philip paddle the Old Town to the center
of the lake. Bags of deer slide overboard. Pelvis, shank, rib. It was a doe, her eyes gone to
milk.
Precise reflection of birch and spruce. Her mother played scales, a slope of notes that
rushed at her through trees. A loon glides in the cove, its cry stilled in the curve of its neck.
That night she will let him hurt her. He will sink his teeth into her shoulder as his life spills
into her. He will find the hard knot of her nipple and suckle like an infant, his own death
something not yet a possibility.
9
Medina and James make quick, hard love. It is impossible to rid her body’s need of him.
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