Читать книгу North American Stadiums - Grady Chambers - Страница 12

Thousand Islands

Just past border patrol we round the corner

toward Thousand Islands Bridge

when the car coming toward us veers and Kira cries

out and braces against the sweep of headlights

as the car nears and straightens and skids

then straightens and in a spit of snow

comes to rest on the shoulder, quiet,

undamaged, ticking. I’m as nervous as Kira

though I try not to show it as she sighs

back into her seat.

After Michael died, Mark went to rehab

and Danny lost his hair and disappeared

each weekend into the High Sierra,

and Brian worked his torso into a perfect board, a stacked

abdomen

and a thick grid of veins raised beneath his forearms

when he flexed.

After Michael died, we stood in a basement

and drank soda out of plastic cups and watched a montage

of him becoming young again.

We reach the peak of the bridge

and Kira leans to the window to watch the bricked ice

glide by below, and what I remember is

we flew a kite, Michael and I, a grey November Saturday,

he knelt in a field and pulled it from its box,

shimmied the rods into the slits,

the cloth growing taut across the frame.

He threw me the spool and jogged out

and shouted, Now! freeing the kite while I reeled in the

string to make it climb.

And it did, it lifted, he whooped and stumbled toward me,

he took the spool from my hands and zigzagged out

across the darkening field, his eyes skyward, his tongue

curled

from the corner of his mouth, Michael, Gordo, chubby

in his Little League tee, undone buttons, his chest

a soft shelf of flesh, the flabby puds of his nipples

pressing through his shirt, eyes tight in concentration.

And time passed, it grew cold, I slipped my hands

into my sleeves, a dog barked, I called, Michael, Michael, he

shrugged

and chinned the air, Look at it! It made a ragged snap,

it seemed proud, what color was it? It hung there like a wish,

I said,

Michael, pleading, I wanted to go home.

I tell none of this to Kira as the wipers rise and fall

against the snow.

How could I explain it? My friends

working their bodies into youth

as they grow older, Michael tethered to a kite

while I called his name,

the snowy road, night falling.

And how can I explain that when she puffs her bottom lip

and blows her bangs from her eyes

there is so much love inside me

I want to pull the car to the shoulder

and hold her there, while all I can do

is nod at the shoreline

and say, When it’s warm, we’ll come back here.

And I think that maybe we will—a weekend in a cabin,

a stone path sloping down to water, the river

in front of her, her hands shading her forehead—

and she just turns the heat up and smiles, and I accelerate

down the last drop of the bridge,

and our stomachs jump into our throats, and we coast

back into the country where we were born.