Sport 31: Spring 2003
The Apartment
The Apartment
I
Even the light's
migrated to wake up
beside you in this new,
white room—
trees erased
to accommodate
the sounds that travel the morning's long
conversation
with distance, a white wall surfacing
in rented glass.
There's nothing left to do
but wait, now,
for something to remind us
why we came.
II
Rooms
where every word we ever spoke
has gathered, now, around us,
to ask after
the things that didn't quite make it
up the stairs—missing boxes
containing the gestures
we didn't want to make
boxes whose weight is all
that holds us to the ground.
And the shadows
we brought with us
fall near enough now
to the things that cast them
to demonstrate
that light still travels here in lines.
More than one dish has broken
already to baptise
each new room—
broken glass lodging itself
inside the body.
Think—
we're high enough here
for water
to try its scales in the pipes,
for clouds
to enter by the bathroom window
a voice
dropped from the roof
to take its question
with it into disappearance—
for us to wrap the wind
around our bodies
to keep us warm at night.