Widow, and: The Ghost, and: The Mother, and: Doubles

Widow

If silence were a creature like a dog, and could follow youaround like a dog does, and come when you call.If silence were a housecat you rescued from the alley,pampered and declawed, who sits around ignoring youand purrs sometimes in her sleep.If silence were the small birds who come to the suetyou've hung outside your kitchen window,who bang themselves sometimes against the kitchen windowand tumble to the sidewalk. If silence were the journeyyou take down the stairs to revive them, breathing into their delicate faces like a song.If silence were the way they leap up and fly away,headed, you imagine, for more exotic climeswhere the trees are simply brighter and the flowers intoxicatein ways they just can't where it's cold. When it's coldyou love to walk out, until you're lost, like snow.When it's cold you make fires in your hair and in your clotheswhich you think of as ghosts, or lovers.When it's cold you understand things by leaving them alone.Taste me the cheese and apples on your plateseem to cry while you look out the window at the birds,winter birds gorging themselves on your suetwhile you sit burning inside.

The Ghost

Anyone can learn how to do the things we all do,but it takes a genius to think like a cat,especially a stray cat with kittens, who livesin the gardenia bushes by the front door.Of course I don't mean a real cat, I mean an animalof the mind. Otherwise it's just ordinary life.Anyway, the mother cat disappeared, and one of herkittens starved to death in our front yard.So we're feeding the other two until we can abandon themwith a clear conscience, when they're big enoughto catch their own food. In the meantime, we've given themnames we don't mention too often, for fearthey'll come when we call. But these aren't dogs,after all, these cats of the mind, small ritualswe live by. And they've been trying to slip into the house when we open the front door,so we pet them as we shoo them, as we go in and out,until they start to purr, and a second silencerises from their bodies into ours.

The Mother

She woke with a whole set of gleaming new teethin her mouth, more teeth than fit comfortably there,and she lay in bed a while, smelling her own damp pillow,not a bad smell at all—a wild flower fallingaway from itself, just fading. Let it go,she thought and wondered how she looked in these new teeth:Lovelier than before, she imagined, as she heard himmoving through the house, the man she'd said she loved,and she tried to imagine his face but saw nothingfor the moment. He was handsome, she knew that for sureand he had large hands. She remembered the waythey covered her body like the leaves of some plantthat grew in the tropics, somewhere she'd never visited,and flowered at night. That's all she rememberedof this man she could hear now, singing in the kitchento the children, who sang back. Her legs were made of woodand her backbone had been stolen from some larger animal,a dolphin perhaps. Built to last, they had saidwhen they'd stood back to admire her; and her arms, her armswere like a mannequin's: life-sized, permanently bent.Soon they would rush in and jump into bed with herand ask her to tell them a story, these childrenshe knew she loved so much she'd give up everything for them,as any mother would. The light was lovely,she thought, through the curtains, and the day smelled sweetas it blew through the window to steal her. And that was all.

Doubles

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