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ON THE WATERBED
THEY SANK TO THEIR OWN LEVELS
Matters that had never been resolved
wrinkle on her eyelid
like lines on a prayer plant leaf.
These will never transfer to her lover.
They are hers to roll with.
And his events are scattered across
his partly opened eyes--
a man whose sleep is filled
with flinches.
Reading had let them know more
of who they were
and sleep blended it all together,
so the knowing became unknown
and appeared under their faces
at moments.
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HINDSIGHT
She sat on her glasses, crushed them,
and squinted into her past.
She swallowed--and could it be her mother's
esophagus the spaghetti was sliding down?
She had an indeterminate amount of luggage
and too few days to throw into it.
The time to leave was coming too near
like the face on the other side
of the window
carrying glimpses of her into the marshes
and lost fields.
The day fell.
Artichoke hearts went kaput
beneath their leaves.
And she woke up at the age of 22 with a past
and moved with it, though she didn't understand
the way it broke through to her face.
The blue sky falls on the brown table
and turns purple.
The man sleeping on the table
has turned pink.
She doesn't know what color she has become.
A bald man looks up;
the back of his head wrinkles into a baby's face.
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DECORATING THEIR OWN INTERIORS
She thinks of herself as a sex object
but others think she's purely intelligent.
He is still in bed,
stuck in the warm indent
he's made for himself.
The neighbors glide by.
The wind makes them nervous
but also lets them know where they are.
Their hair upright on their heads;
their laughter bordering on their senses.
She was loving
but it was only a certain kind of loving,
shook up by nervousness.
He took it for what it was
and gave back
his splash-dash kind of kindness
in a push-me pull-you way.
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THE SECOND HALF OF OUR LIVES
We are all friends who have lived our childhood
way into adulthood.
Childless, we go out for dinner.
There are no compromises.
Each limb is its own.
There's only the commotion of living
the second half of our lives
in the bulk of the first.
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