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The Empty Bed

          "When you sleep in your clothes, it's not really sleep,
           it's waiting for dark to be light."
          --Jennifer Lauck

That's how we were. Never quite safe.
I'd sleep in a robe up to my chin
clamped on the cotton like Tupperware lids.
Summer moons were cashew curls
outside the drapes. Whole and plump,
beyond the arduous reach.
I wonder now, these acres
of a queen-sized bed seem 
to house jesters in black and white 
mocking my rivers of blood.
The mattress is smiling 
with lines of our lies -- 
their garlic still fresh 
as witches we were.

Under my ribs, the fist and the vein
consider this sorrow a home. 
Crushing the acorn at dusk
does nothing to center a sickly tree.
The forest forgetting the snow
will have to remain a journey of suns
rolling their pennies over the ice.
My reading lamp extends its arm -- 
its shadow makes war like a sword. 
Mud packs ride my tired eyes;
I finger a sonnet of lace where 
strangling roots once choked the dirt.
Next I'll braid the scrawny daisies
stripped of oblong ivory.
I've folded the lips of new sheets --
pretty side up --
replaced the pillows you weren't.

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