Spring

The Practice

67 The Practice Last night the moon followed me home big and red and low, like a wounded ox. It dragged itself after me with stertorous breathing. It called names aloud hoping it would Ānd my name in time. Later, in my sleep, a girl had Pretty Poison, it was called. A girl and her dog poisoned the entire village. As a woman’s face blossomed into sores, I heard her shout Leave me alone, clawing animal. I can hear you dying at the screen door. Don’t look at me. Don’t come close to me. Get away from me. “At least I have you to talk to, invisible friend,” I said to no one as I woke in the pitch. In my next dream, I killed a truly rotten individual I once had known. I entered his room as he lay propped up in his invalid’s bed and I slit his back open with a Āshing knife. I emptied out his body like a laundry sack, like a complicated wineskin, like a pig bladder, and then, that no one would notice he was gone, that no one would Ānd his skin, I stepped into it and pulled it over me. Its gory warmth encased me, rotting, decomposing around my own arms and legs and chest. My face was covered with his puffy face, and my cheeks began to mottle with rot, the skin purpling and flaking as the day wore on. I kissed my husband with the dead man’s face over my face. Forgive me, I said in my dream. 68 And now, the loud light comes blaring through the light hatch. Downstairs, I pass the plants struggling in dry soil. The dust is languishing, perpetuating on the living room shelves, on the tops of books, hundreds of purchased, alphabetized books, chronological within author. In the piano studio, the humidifier puffs its mist into the air. Rainbows shoot in sun rays from a crystal on the window and burst on the white walls. I step through some rainbows. Some show on my t-shirt and some on my skin, like beauty I like to think. I love it here, in the sunny room with rainbows. Like birds flying on the walls. I love the sound when it Ārst enters the air, and how to shape the sound lovingly like a glassblower shapes his molten glass, the loose liquid molecules. I check the time and record the digits. I sit on the bench. I wring my hands. I untangle my hands. I lay them on the keys. So it begins, the practice. ...