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Landscapes

A novel in verse … and the writing thereof

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Damages

So I’d been wrong. There was no respite

and no end, and so

there was no safety, now or here

or anytime or anywhere, and I

go back to bed and stay there.

I felt numb, except

numbness shouldn’t

hurt this much. My eyes ached as though

all night I’d been

counting grains of sand by candle light.

Even in bed there seemed to be

no rest, although I did

sometimes do something I suppose

resembled sleeping.

The first two times

sent him away, but the third

he would not go, and

even though I merely

crawled back in the bed, my face

to the wall, he refused

to be ignored, his arms

scooping me up, the warmest

thing I could imagine. He

draped me across his chest and

held me there, not talking,

to cry. Then it seemed

I’d never stop.

When I did, more or less, I

told him the story,

and said, I wanted to get married, now, and

go away, I’d had enough

of this war, I couldn’t bear it

Shh, he said. Yes. As soon as he was

discharged, and they said

it would be any day now, we would

get married and

drive away, “into the dawn,” he said,

“like cowboys in reverse.”

I got so still he studied my face and asked,

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just trying to see it,” I said.

“Do you ride them facing backwards, or do they

gallop backwards, like in the movies when they put

the reel in wrong?”

“I’ll have to study up on that one,” he said,

“and I’ll require some food to fuel my fires while I do.

Come on, kid, let’s go et somethin’.”

“Okay,” I said, the memory of hunger in my mind

into the night.

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