Dusky beams through rows of small medicine bottles
placed neatly on a glass shelf in a window.
A woman constantly rearranges daffodils
in a vase, placing it in the depressed nook of a wall.
I just want to write about a woman and daffodils,
but I don’t want to infer anything by mentioning them together.
You may think she has a reason, an obsession, a compulsion
to arrange them, rearrange them, place them in that nook.
But that is not what I mean.
I just want yellow, frilled horn petals, lush green stems
diffused by cool water and a cheap glass vase.
Maybe I want her to be wearing a small felt hat
and have wavy hair, a curl laying flat on a cheek near the lobe
of a prim ear. But maybe that is really too much.
The smell is not good here no matter how prim an ear may make me feel
or a vase of daffodils. It smells like soft animals who have overslept
And forgotten to breath. It reminds me of nothing.
I want to relate this to you, to how I feel now.
But the air smells like dust and hollow rooms appear,
books, decanters, instruments, plates and lamps you’ve chosen
that remind me of your mother: porcelain, arabesque, breakable.
It is all blown out and amplified echoing off gilt walls
The tin ceiling smeared with the faces of intoxicated cherubim
mawkish and proud, partially lost under plaster and residues.
So pretty, a small hard face, taught skin wrapped, like a greased doll
so pretty in the sun. I wore dresses for you, wanted to be pretty
wanted people to think “how pretty she is,
how lucky he is to have such prettiness by his side.”
I imagine leeches, bruises, razor wire, hot iron, raw meat
(the nightmares of childhood)
right where the beauty shines out the most,
right at the cheekbone.
I want to teach myself to fear every hand, every posture,
every movement of a man after my neck with a cane from the curtains.
It is disgusting how I gesticulate on this stage.
Coiffing my hair like I should be staining my lips
And wearing satin negligee.
Like I am a vessel from the place
Where all boys disembark to where they end up.
The woman rearranges daffodils,
brings me a glass of cool water with vinegar
although she knows no one will ever drink it.
It is a matter of habit, of what is expected.
