On that hot day in August,
a peek in
from outside her kitchen curtains
might have shown her barefoot
in the center of the room,
her body’s movement suggesting
a sway, while she
ran one toe back and forth,
up and down
smooth tracing the perimeters
of old avocado
linoleum tiles.

Etched in her eyes —
the designing stage
of distance,
her escape from
the seen-better-days-kitchen,
corn broom prostrate and still,
red mop pail, dirty-water filled,
and forgotten.

Through the humidity
her hearing only receptive to
the ripple of leaves in pines
on high paths; fresh
invocations, intoxicating.

Mid-summer’s smart of beach sand
heat underfoot, in her mind,
she’d have paced
a dizzy route winding down
to a slow stroll,
her stare downward,
as if in search of fugerlites
after a fierce storm.
A child dreaming of finding a different story
ending, in the bottle-like receptacles.

Possibly one of
self-sustenance
on the deserted beach
of another planet. One where language lands
more softly, gently
not like the night before’s,
hot and crude
and tainted
by the fury
those timeworn green sheets
over hardwood beneath her, had served as
platform to, when
home returned to hostile territory

his curses boiled over into
clenched large hands at the ready,
dominant until her eyes
bore down only on the
green and white gingham
of the curtains, hanging where they had
all the years of this marriage-
their ruffles pushed along, pushed along, the rod,
parting just enough to reveal
the outside world.

On that hot August day.

08/22/2005