On the Desire to Levitate: Poems

Lesson

49 Lesson When I imagine aging further, I salivate and fidget, want to strip or argue hard, fry something, spin. Each day my body gains something and loses, so I do things for the sake of it, am a woman smiling at her enemy at the party. To keep me company, I search for someone to paint into my corner— together we’d shrink from the passing ambulance, disbelieving, forgiven as dogs. My mother, with her one way to age, her giving in, glides through hollow rooms. Her house a white sure drum, the television echoes. She says she dreams of nothing, calls dreaming voodoo; between quilt stitches, her looks reward me nothing. No one touches her while she prepares her wholesome meals, hummingbirds circle the impenetrable place, ignored. When I am old I know the days might stare like sharks, open mouthed, waiting for the glint. My mother taught me to nap. In the middle of each day, in separate poised ways, we lie on our beds and wait. ...