hand heavy with gold.

Face fully made.

(You’d never even seen me in lipstick,

I thought, and is that sad? Or isn’t it?)

I gave up everything I wanted

to have something else I wanted

more. I know why

you didn’t think for a moment

of leaving her.

You spare yourself one fire

in order to endure

another.

Cooler. Eternal.

At the altar I was as calm as Joan

eyeing the pyre:

knees not shaking.

Cheeks as dry as chalk.

LINE

LINE

You call from the hospital hallway. Your oldest. The girl.

Skull fracture. Your voice is at its lowest, and I try not to

think about the other times I’ve heard it this way, hushed,

odd hours, splitting into a sigh, a laugh, a sob. Dear God.

I’m on the back porch looking at the enormous lawn. You

breathe on the line; I imagine the bleak thrill of it, me

holding your hand in that hallway. Pressing her hair back

from her head. Eating from a vending machine. I’m not

sure you even know it’s me listening. Your head is in some

catastrophe loop. Car crash. No air bag and Her face, her

face. Shh, I say. I’m here. I can’t help wondering: Who did

you call first? Me? Or the other one? How many others have

there been? I rub my eye, trying to scrub away the thought,

how stupid it is, after all this time, and especially now.

The lights go on behind me. He comes out to see who I’m

talking to, why there’s no dinner on the table, but I don’t

turn around. You and I silent, our heads on the pillow. Just

breathing. How long I’ve lived for that. Her chest beneath

the white sheet. You’ll watch her sleep tonight and I, I will be

watching with you.

ENEMY II

ENEMY II

We started out as usual. Me on the edge of the bed after

a bath, soaked towel and medusa hair. My husband

unstrapping his watch. What’s wrong, he said. I didn’t

answer. Honey put on your pajamas. I don’t want fucking

pajamas! I yelled, flinching from his hand when he tried to

steady me. Why do you keep doing that, he said. I put my

face in my hands, a powerful gesture to a certain man, a

man like my husband, who takes pity on things, whose pity

leads him to love. Come on, you can tell me. So I told him

Just this once. Please just the one time never again. I can’t,

he said, and I stroked his thigh Yes you can, spreading my

knees, and when he said No again I slapped him—do you

know what it’s like, to see someone backed so thoroughly

into a corner, wanting to come through for you, hating

you?—and kept slapping until he put the pillow over my