Night Letters

Tuesday

Each night, a small cat steps closer
To my window. Braver and braver.
Soon there will be tracks like dusky clovers

Across the covers, and straight hairs
On your empty side of the bed. I make a
Coaxing sound with my lips,

Hold out two fingers to the night
Thinking to lure it that way.
Sometimes, the nights are so silent

I forget why I'm here.
Your belongings ignore me, go on
With their wordless conversation,

Confident you'll return soon
To rub your hands along their lines,
Erasing distance. Sometimes,

I want to do what I did once
In a frightening dream. Take a cab
Up past where the avenues arc down

And streetlamps converge and disappear,
Then step out and take a look
At who I'm with. In the dream,

I didn't want to but I did, forced
By pointless evenings just like these,
The bed grinning up from the floor.

Sleep, it seems to say. But I don't sleep.

In the dream, the face beside me
Was blotched and wet,
And the strong hand clamped my arm.

Why do dreams betray us?
My limbs were too heavy, steps
Dazed, dizzy, going wherever.

I remember those mute, reluctant blocks
That led to the dark room
Where my mind struggled to wake.

Remember my own bright shirt
Like a defeated flag
Among the heap of clothes.

Why does it take you so long
To come for me?

Friday

Curtains flayed, days glide by
Like southward birds. I am alone,
Living like a child in a deserted house.
Some days I am glad.
Others, a hunger
That is part anger
Makes me vivid. I am growing
With a little of you inside me,
Forgetting so many things.
All the words for reason
Lie heaped at the back of a closet
I will not open
Until the sun has crossed my window
For the last time without waking you.
The 13th again.
Unseasonably cold.

Sunday

Sometimes, all I wish for
Are those exhausted nights in San Francisco
Before you were real. When I'd finish
A party and change slowly into my clothes,
Then go for a drink with Robert
Or Michael at a place where women
Weren't supposed to matter.
I was anyone I wanted to be. Lola.
Laura. I could talk and talk
And my legs never stopped moving.

Wednesday

A man who looks like an ancient
Version of your father,
Buries his hand in a bag of crumbs.
Pigeons rush his ankles,
Whispering in the voice of the sea.

I'm tired. I've forgotten what's important.
Maybe I ought to go back to my room
And turn on the stereo, follow my thoughts
To that place in the middle where they just. . . .

Somewhere it is always night on the planet.

Saturday

Me with my feet wet
From the sky that shattered
Like an angry miracle.
Me perched every wet night
On the edge of that sleep
Where you come to me.
Where you step forward on dark gravel
And we begin.

Outside, buses cruise past
Like ancient, leaf-eating beasts,
Bodies too big for the minds
That move them. And the sharp,
Short sounds that must be
Signals of wanting, of great feeling.

Alone, I listen for that faint
Whirring as life passes in and out
Of you. I hear sirens
And the bleating of cars parked
Where they will not be left in peace.
Air blows the curtains out and back.

I listen, knowing
You are so far away I must be
Inside you, knowing the night is a great,
Soft, whispering, steady thing
Going on in and around you
And that I am in it.