It did not save me any grief to go numb at the sound of your

car, arriving. It did not drain the pus from the panic when

I heard you leave, for the final time, the tires on the leaves

and then the sound of the dirt and rubber over stone I heard

everything, you know, I went to the door and died.

THE HERMIT

THE HERMIT

I took the blanket, the batteries, the cups. The notebooks,

the empty ink jars, the novels you’d given me, a picture

I pinched from your wallet. I left our hair in the bath. I

stripped the bed, drove with the sheets in my lap, didn’t cry

at the traffic lights, cried in the travel plaza over a plate of

cold fries. Like in the movies I cut my hair in the bathroom

as soon as I got home. I put the sheets on the bed in the city

and I smelled us in them and didn’t wash. The noise outside

my door made me cry. Television made me cry, I hadn’t

watched one in a year and it was full of beautiful sad women

why so sad? I thought again and again of the woodcutter,

when I knocked on his door and gave him twenty dollars

to clean the cabin I could not clean it. I can’t, I said, but he

didn’t move his hand, he didn’t move at all. This man, you

understand, was like a statue, he hated me, my weakness,

and I threw the money—it was almost all I had—I threw

it at his chest. I couldn’t meet his eyes. What color they

were. I wanted him to do it to me. Grab me or spit at me

or make love to me. But I think he just didn’t care either

way. When you said goodbye it was you who could not even

stand. You kneeled at my feet. I said nothing. Didn’t clutch

or scream. It happened to another body, the dead one, but

the woodcutter saw through that body, he cut to the quick.

He wouldn’t pick up the money. I would have frozen except

for him. Could he have embraced me. Could he have said a

single kind word. I slid off the steps and he closed his door.

TICK

TICK

It was so hot in the cottage

when summer arrived

and my table

broke its leg, the cooler

kept leaking the ants

ate my legs inexplicably

drawn to the bed on the nights

I was alone, and I was

as in the beginning

alone. The woods

thickened. I knew the names

of the birds and the feeling of the mushrooms

smashed up against my bare back,

dirt

climbing the crack of my ass

as you rode me into the rock.

On the night

we said goodbye a tick

dug its head into my hip and you

dug it out