Читать книгу White Nightgown - Megan Gannon - Страница 9

Shade

Fingernails under wallpaper

scratching sound like palpable

air, scatter-pattern of hands

behind your headboard, the face

you’re sure—a third floor

window, the peripheral whisked

looking in—what don’t you

believe? A boy the color

of a lightbulb cowering

in the corner of an old

hotel or rounding a wind-licked

house in full flee. Not eyes,

not corpuscles or corpses. The stain

of shape. The sand-scrubbed

rubbed-thin trace of veinery

pressed into stone. A violence

so shattering, his body not bulwark

or ballast enough, the spirit

jerks loose and imprints itself,

releasing his huddled, focused fear

like dust from a hung rug.

Skin icing over nerve, you want

to believe feeling evaporates, leaves

nothing, not even

a wet mark. Emotion a scrim

like early morning mist or just morning

touching bodies in their beds.