Physics
What was left when I went up the stairs--
stretched out, centered on his bed, was heavy there—
an I-beam dropped onto a pile of leaves,
a granite slab dropped on a bed of pale tulips.
Heavy, liquid, solid, dense, and empty--
an element no one had ever measured or identified--
stayed steady in the grey world while
I lay across the bed and couldn’t find myself,
then broke open. Howling
leapt out to beat against the walls
like some trapped bat.
I wondered how it was
He didn’t slump back into the core
where everything is pressed upon so hard
it pushes back and burns--
just mass and density so far beyond measurement.
No statue I’ve ever seen was this dead.
Freed of the weight of a soul, I believed he’d lighten.
My thick body wears every slap and crack of his
big right hand. He kept slapping handsfull of flesh on me
like a plasterer covering a wall, like a child pounding
handsfull of sand on a castle he knows he’ll kick apart,
smacking all this into place between his hands and
my heart, weighing me down
so I can never move away.