Who Are We To Think We Get the Ending We Want?

Reading in bed an old copy of a book

I’d brought here from home, my childhood home,

a photograph slipped out from between

the pages and landed face down on the comforter.

I had probably used it as a bookmark

the last time I had read this, back in high school.

Instead of turning it over, though, I just

sat and looked at the blank white back of

the picture. My mother used to write on the backs

of photos, who and where and when;

but I never did, it never seemed important.

Until now.

There are too many people I would not

be able to handle seeing, if I turned the

picture over. So I left it face-down and

went back to reading the book.

But I couldn’t focus on the words,

my thought were drifting back in time

to the summer when I was fifteen

or sixteen and I had last opened this book

and read it. I seem to remember having

a broken arm, a robin’s-egg blue cast,

trying to turn the pages with stiff,

robotic movements. I don’t remember,

though, how I’d broken it.

I remember lying down in the backseat

of my friend’s car, cradling my limp

arm on my chest, my skin hot and sweaty

and the car driving fast and my friend

telling me not to move so much.

The windows are open but it’s the middle

of summer and hot air is blowing over me.

Now it’s spring and the open window brings

the smell of the canal into my room,

I always sleep with the window open,

because I like dreaming of the sea,

I like dreaming of ships and swimming,

I like waking in the night to feel cold air

sliding over my chest and face,

like a wight’s kiss,

since I have kicked the comforter down

to my waist in my sleep, I cannot tolerate

the embrace of so much comfort.

In the winter I would wake with

goosebumps and tight balls.

Besides, the world goes on while we are asleep,

people are riding trams and cleaning offices

and drinking so much they fall down the stairs

and break their arms,

or making love or fixing their bike.

Only people who have never sinned

sleep face-down, everyone else needs to

be ready to flee or face the little revenges that come

in the middle of the night.

How do you sleep like this, someone asked me once,

but I pretended I was asleep and didn’t answer.