Empty House

The nubs of the wall-to-wall are pressing themselves to her face: printing one eyelid, one ear, one cheek. I watch her. I watch her over and over in my mind's eye. Her eye can see out the window, where she knows there are field, a dark stand of pine and a pond. Heat: his hands at her skull, neck, shoulder and backbone -    wadded up muscle, tendon, tight tissue. His palms, his thumbs knead and release. Between one breath and the next, this moment and that, I feel the coming of rain; the air has hung thick for days now, shading summer, until all wishing for things to be different wears everyone down. Her mind, unlike mine, has grown dull: his voice? no, it's the sound inside her - like rocks being ground to pebbles then grains. These walls have been washed and painted: his newest place, emptied, like those before this, of any reminder: no mirrors, no vases. I've seen them through - how many years now? - decades: five houses, two wives, one husband, six children between them, how many lies and lovers? How long can their laden, leaden affair drag forward? His mouth at her ear: Do you want me to go deeper? but doesn't wait for her answer. That woman, he says, what she did to me - She looks toward the window. The sky seems to say, I cannot hold you up another minute. And just lets go. Together we gaze at the great grey weight easing itself to the ground: a slow motion sinking. Out there, near the pond's weedy rim, the grey gathers - sunken, settled. That's when I say I must leave you. See! It's broken through: no he, no she - this is about you and me. From the far shore or somewhere one dog's barking. Then another. Again. Hard to tell which one is dog, which echo.