Jagged with Love

Inside a Thin Egg

InSIDe a THIn EGG The man next door is calmly standing over his two dogs saying, "No Barking, No Barking," carryingthe vowel of the No out like a one-note song. I learned the song as I slept, the same time my husband's cat dragged in a baby robin, stripped offeathers, the wood floor dappled in reds. It took a great, hollow time-as if inside an old rubber ball-to hear myself singingthe word, the one long note. I covered the bird and stopped, rubbing my fingers together in the air, as ifthe corners ofthe house held another answer. I scooped and dropped her into the trash bin. In the shower I scrubbed myselftender. Now I sit, watching the stupid cat sniffthe floor where I wiped each staccato drop clean. My appetite is gonenot from the fluids or torn body, how the lavender skin of the robin's eyelids wrinkled, her shape drooping into the curve of my handbut because it occurs to me, calm as it is, how vicious our domestic creatures are, all the desperate noises they must make: to be scolded, to be extolled, to be known at all. Is it the lambent tune ofhumanity-the one word, the one-noted No-which separates us from animals? In the bed where we made love last night, I open the dictionary. Six entries for the word no. It discourages me, the vague, disparate, common way this word works on the page. I let go 11 l~ the thick binding, the letters on half-moons falling forward, M-N, K-I, 1-J, I lay my palm on the tight, round shoulder of my husband, not awake but moving toward me, exhaling a dream through his nostrils. I will not look at his eyelids, lavender veins running subtly across his temples. Here is an upside-down-boy next to the word headstand, here the profiles ofAdolf Hitler and Alfred Hitchcock on the same page, here hydrangea and Aldous Huxley one column apart. My eyes close. Inside a thin egg, I move until my mouth is on my husband's shoulder. ...