[I never knew what to name from my life and what to hide]

      Impossible to explain          :            After our baby was born 
you hardly touched me for a year

      you didn’t even kiss me like you used to and I knew stories how the body’s changes and the mind

      are one and how the timid work of making one body from secret elements changes you

      but what I didn’t know was if I was still beautiful to you How 
impossible to say that when someone else touches

      my arm and laughs I dream about them every night and fear 
I’ll say a name as I reach to cover you

      again with the quilt I reach to cover your shoulders kissing 
your shoulders and in the most recent dream

      the person in bed with me said I bet I can lift you and laughing I said Try and found myself levitating

      like Margarita in The Mirror levitating above the bed someone 
else’s hands rippling the sheet

      round my thighs I was flying over a multitude of still waters 
until finally I touched that face and they kissed

      my palm holding me as a frozen brook holds the sound 
it will make again

      now I lifted their body and their thighs soft on my arms like pink orchids under the window of my dark

      childhood bedroom Do I understand you now Father Do I 
understand what can make a heart leave