Can I Hold It?, and: The Night Before Depakote

Can I Hold It?

They look at each other first,
As if I might break it,
As if I might feel
How deep its ears go
Or try to peel its eye
Like a scab, as if I would think
Of forcing its lids open, pinching
Its nose closed, feeding it dirt, or worse -
Messing with the boy part.
As if I might be wondering
Where can I hide it,
What would the cat do,
If it will float. Can I hold it?
And this time they let me,
Smiling, handing down
Its open face, soft head,
No teeth for biting back.

The Night Before Depakote

It's enough that we live, my old friend
And I. It's enough that we sit together,
Lungs keeping duty, laughter now and then
Taking its shortcuts through us. Tonight
Is our first movie fest since
College and details split us,
Since her apprenticeship to liquor
And my attempts to peel my skin off
Like dried glue, get a good look at my bones.

We're watching a movie called Beautiful Girls.
There is ice on a lake, and I wonder
Can water feel itself freezing? Do the fish
Want to stay underneath forever?
A girl in the movie loves an older man.
They can't be together. We envy
Their love-story pain, recollecting
Spring afternoons before soccer practice
When we'd explore the empty
Church on Ardmore, pretending
To be spies. I code-named her Stealth
Because she was best at silencing her cleats
In the echo-heavy halls. We were unprepared
For the scenes ahead - eulogies, traced phone lines -
Walking the long way around to avoid
One another, our forgivable wandering
Into different shades of the dark.

But tonight we're as close as always.
Closer. She's the same beneath
Her sadness she won't betray
Just to please an audience, as if she spent years
Drawing her smile up from a well and now
Wears it only when she means it.
But who am I on the eve of the whitewash?
Who will I be in the poemless country
To come? I feel the words clot already,
I tell her, like salmon refusing to run.
And my friend whose father is one-year dead,
Whose mother was locked up for crazy,
My friend who will always
Call me Dagger, takes my hands. I don't care
About your writing. I'd rather have you,
She says, as if the two were separate, as if
What kills one could save the other.