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Camarada Oh you with the broken back, you curled on the bedspread, the curb, clenched with the knob of quilt between your thighs, you hugging your country song— nowhere to go and no wayto get there— to your chest, that cave with its nubbins of bat rocks, your friendship, your camaraderie,your hollow under the house, you deer. Safe away from your skin, the hollows of your rough cheeks, poked holes, your silk hair I wrap around me, a gift, a present for someone else who loves you too. Presumptuous, a stiff word your tongue bumps into, presumptuous to suppose she'd turn to you. Safe in my white room abovethe nursery, above the garden, the smokestacks belching their bones, safe in my history, the family you wouldn't give birth to, the home you never had. How do you get a chair? you ask me. Dummkopf.The shadow I am on my walls wants you too. You open nothing.You clamp your music onto your ears and wind dies down, rain in its bowl of cinders, the possum slitches its body through grass— you don't hear. You have only the cave of your ear to escape to, 69 a dark place you light with music, a place so small I can't find you, a place safe but austere. I am your keeper, your jailer, your truant, the villain who keeps you from coming out to play. Our words are babel to each other, our touch a magic wrapper. Dear loved one, give me freedom to come and go as I will. I'll stay home, the fireplace ashes,my fur shoe. 70 ...

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