The Sleeping Wall

The Sleeping Wall
14
From her window, the birch forms a tangle of arms washed with moonlight, flowers beneath
it tiny gravestones. She slips out of herself. Flees into the yard to climb the tree
toward the hard, round light she once knew but now cannot name.
Hand over hand, she pulls her airy weight through night and bits of light. She twists and
writhes and settles on a branch. Exhausted, nervous, afraid of falling.
How she mourns the rush of blood, flesh that warms the bone. But she knows longing is
never enough. The tree asserts its claim, pulls her into its sooty bark. Moonlight a river,
indifferent, blind.
Night erases the house. Except the circle of light reflected in the window. Hint of face and
hand as if an x-ray.
15
16
She burns her mother’s music
Sheet after sheet into the fire
The paper devours itself
Medina rocks in her mother’s chair. Lines of lead divide the window, break lake and birch
into pieces different from what she remembers. One morning, ice will lace lake to shore.
The sky is blue. The lake the color of Philip’s eyes before they closed them. Michael, my own child
with midnight eyes.
Arc of the clock’s brass pendulum. Its minute hand drags, then pulls forward with a snap.
Call of nighthawk passing low, her speckled eggs unguarded at roof ’s edge.
Beyond memory stands a wall of forgetfulness. The wall is white. Behind it, you can hear grass
pushing through earth, the rustle of your mother’s skirts. You can hear your own death.
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