Читать книгу The Anti-Grief - Marianne Boruch - Страница 10

That Thing

I have a lot of rue in me.

A bicycle tire to fix.

World peace to attend to.

Bones in the x-ray not lighting up right.

I have an ear

for that scratching in the wall that

keeps one awake in the short run,

like: whether to tell you

that thing or not.

That thing. So many names for it but certain

categories in the subset of

small and dark include

all the better to see you with, my dear, said the wolf

in that bonnet swiped from

the grandmother he ate. Try to figure a logic there

if you come into the story midway. Which

is every human’s condition.

Case in point: my family’s ridiculous habit,

showing up to movies halfway through. Then sitting

the same mileage into the next run—

theaters couldn’t care less, all day if you wanted—

until scenes got familiar, a runaway train, a kitchen knife

redropped. Until my mother, reduced

to a whisper: this is where we came in meant

finish your popcorn, we’re going.

If I told you

the screw-up, the backstory

of that thing I should

tell you… Ugh. Such earnestness in the world

is exhausting. Consider the local Y, full up

with the breathless on machines,

persistent perfect shapes-to-be while

the youngest among us sit poolside, stunned

to a rivet by a crushing coach.

Look at my nose! shouts the bellowed monster of the shallows.

Their little heads turn.

To sleep is to dream all the way. But too much

of that thing went on today.

I lower my head to the pillow for my brain

to be washed all night—

Because you said

that happens, that’s the drill. Whatever fluids

I had no part in making

run ragtag and rivered over my

bleak-in-there, for hours.