1980
When the scruff of his voice
scratched my face, I knew it was time
to hide behind my hair.
My thick velvety mop of a veil.
A canopy of solitude and compassion.
I made the most delightful observations
while excommunicated to my tent of loneliness.
In the evening, light will hold
a single strand and make it transfigure.
The slightest friction will charge
a long wandering piece of hair
and suspend it’s usual animation,
a transfixed snake, a floating rope
freezing it’s climb to heaven.
Then his hand, vice grip
of my skull, each finger a father
holding on to as much of me as possible
driving me down towards the dog’s bowl.
And I ate the food on all fours.
A slow churning beast of a growl
grew in my tummy.
My skin felt tight, like a mask,
the real me about to be ripped
into the light of day,
to melt me, shake me, complete me.
___
2011
When the scruff of his voice,
pressed into the pallet of her cheek,
and she felt the hard hammered fingers
sink into the worn field of her back,
not gripping, but sinking,
as if they had finally given up,
she wanted to tell him that it would be OK,
that when she had blue hair
and chains and rings and men
were holding her together
for all those years,
and the straight-jacket, too,
that she had finally shrunk him down,
smaller than a shoe. She could squash him.
But she held him, propping up his virus body,
he shaking in all his broken parts,
she could not hold him together.
__
This is the, maybe, third of fourth draft of this poem.
