Читать книгу Parallax - Maureen Mulhern - Страница 8

Candelia

Once I’d walk from one end of the living-

Room to another, the medication took hold

And I’d turn into sand;

Particle against particle,

A slow-motion storm that always seemed to drift

Further away. I’d arrive

At the other side, a little changed,

Listening to the breaths of creatures

Barely visible. The lizards

Slipping beneath hibiscus leaves

Were oddly human in their muteness.

And in my blurred sight

Palmettos snagged across the walls,

Mapping out haphazard trails.

In the hospital’s room,

As I tried to read, my eyes could not

Leave the words humming-

Birds, dragonflies; when they lifted up

From the page, a balm of wings

Swirled beneath my pillow

In a column of dust, sand and sun.

Next to me, an old woman

Was brought in from a Nursing Home

With a Condensed Reader’s Digest,

Small black purse, comb, slippers,

Rosaries and glasses. The blood

That poured from her, night and day,

Gathered into pans, the sound of rain

Made slow and magnified.

When I left, I leaned down

Over her face, my shadow moving

Between us; her eyes were distant and specific

In that half-light. It was June

When the early morning’s poultice broke

Between a word and its sound, a body

And its death. The memory I have

Of that woman is of her strength and silence,

How language was a forgotten thing,

Her relatives apologizing

For the inconvenience of it all.