Vigil

I
On the bed she seems blown
into adjustable corners,
a dropped marionette.
Her breath folds over and in:
like yellowed silk, it cracks
into powder at the creases.
You do not look.

You tell her there is a lake
outside she has not seen
that slinks in the sun,
an unrolled bolt of blue fabric,
where a lone gull flies, taut as a grin.
She seems indifferent.

Crocuses bloom beneath
the stone Maris Stella.
Yellow and purple, you tell her.
Yellow purple, she repeats,
her words fading as soon
as they’re struck,
a fast fading bruise.
Yellow purple.

She sleeps. You start to read
the paper of a student who
serves you signs of God
in Lord of the Flies on
intellectual toothpicks,
the appetizers of thought
for which you have no hunger.
Your pencil plies her lines,
a blunt instrument that you
put down in mercy.
Night comes. You wait.

II.
If you were still a child,
eyes of the Disney demons
would open in the window,
the buzz-saw eyes of the
reprobate Queen who would be
the fairest, the fairest of them all.
Once, in the darkened theatre
those eyes spiraled inward,
draining the mirror of its shine
ending all debate. Then they slashed
outward in reverse to stain
the Snow-White beauty with
ribbons of apple red. You ran to the bathroom,
closed the door like a blanket over your head,
and stayed until the music again played safe.
But in your bedroom in the dark
with constant crickets, those eyes broke loose
without warning, turning in, turning out.
You hid beneath the sheets, recycling breath
in small and smaller circles, turning in, turning out
your humid innocence until you could no longer.
You must inhale fresh terror
and pray for the Prince of Sleep.

If you were still a child,
a long-haired Captain would scratch at the glass
with his metal hook. He was the one who stole
unripened children from the heart-safes of trees,
made them stare at the inverse ocean, the swell
of obligation, then pushed them into fate,
into time, into the gullet of the ticking crocodile.
You ran to your mother who told you
that you would never die. It did not matter
that she lied; the truth of heartbeat was greater.

III.
The wind hooks leaves against the window.
Now demon’s eyes are chifforobe knobs
catching the light from where
the nurses pass. You life is now unanimated.
It is real.
The shift changes.

The woman on the bed now breathes
in shallow pants, a final labor: turning in,
turning out, the reel of her breath near its end
scratches at the unseen seam at its core.

Last night she told you that in a dream
she was a seagull high above her cousin’s shore,
above the castles ringed with sea nettles
drying their shine in the sand,
above the clouds transfigurant,
above the sheen of fish smocking the waves,
stitching them together with geometries of flame.

You told her that this dream revealed her flying soul,
free as her final child whose birth is near.
You held her hand.
You want this to be true.

-Kitty Yanson