Bedroom Suite
Meghan Cadwallader
I. Thread Count
I have closed my book and turned out my light
but there’s a pencil in her hand.
She is ghosting words—their light
silvery lines, changeable, impermanent,
the contour of where she is
and where she isn’t, absences
in the ovals of her g’s and l’s,
explosions of meaning and sound
concentrated where t’s cross, where
the stem of a p meets its round, heavy top.
I try to fit my hand to the curve of her hip,
to mold my arm to her side where
she caves in before the flare of her ribcage.
But I cannot slide my hand across her flesh
thwarted by her careful notations
deliberate cross-outs, graphite stroke
upon graphite stroke, adding her up
in ideas, burning thoughts into
apostrophes of spent rubber,
shapes unmade.
Yet the math of my palm--
this blunt, flat instrument—is exact.
It knows each equation, can calculate
every slope, can calibrate every
down-stroke, every movement
of this exercise in skin. The whorl
on my fingertip is a locus
computing distance, time, pressure--
rough elbow, ticklish arches,
meaty thumb, scarred knees--
here I will find myself
fully assembled, as my cells are pulled
to her: a burning where she and I meet
at the coordinates of need.
II. Night Light
Shifting on its foundation, the house
makes sounds. We know how
the floorboards will creak
under our feet, how noises
move front to back, our own jagged
explosions of breath traveling west to east
like the breeze that passes through
cuts and slips around her hips,
her jaw, her breasts—her shape
measured in currents.
I am sand
I am salt
I am water
fitting myself to her thigh
to her cheek
to her shoulder,
I wore her into these contours
even before I knew her.
Watch how the cradle of her pelvis
is shaped to take my touch:
my hand sits just so,
discovering hills and valleys, mapping
crenellations, altitudes, watersheds,
the currents beneath this landscape of flesh.
Lip and tongue give way
in the face of my patience.
A white rime of evaporated sweat,
waves upon the shore, the grains
carried in the wind—each of these my accomplice,
my force as inexorable as each of them
measuring her body in time,
eras and eons compressed like stones.
III. Alarm
I rise early, but sleep calls me back,
or maybe it’s her breathing: little explosions
that I can’t hear down the hall, through the door,
but which I know like a refrain, like
the rise and fall of my own chest.
When I stand in the doorway, dressed
for the day, she turns in bed, open-mouthed
to utter a whispered “I love you;
be careful” as though the words
don’t need shapes, as though she can’t
use her voice when she surfaces
out of a deep unconscious, as though
my desk job is perilous work--
spreadsheets claiming me, numbers
pouring from my mouth in a ticker tape;
projections, flow charts, pivot tables
rolling in my eye sockets like a cartoon
each a mirage of manipulation
the chiaroscuro of profit.
To creep back in, to crawl beneath
the sheet and hide with her
here is the danger: white skin, hair
dark against the pillow, careless
limbs taking my space and beckoning
me all at once--
this is where I must practice caution.
There is no warning on the sheets
no flashing lights, no safety belt,
no speed limit, no hard hat. How
to proceed in this
treachery of cotton?
I. Thread Count
I have closed my book and turned out my light
but there’s a pencil in her hand.
She is ghosting words—their light
silvery lines, changeable, impermanent,
the contour of where she is
and where she isn’t, absences
in the ovals of her g’s and l’s,
explosions of meaning and sound
concentrated where t’s cross, where
the stem of a p meets its round, heavy top.
I try to fit my hand to the curve of her hip,
to mold my arm to her side where
she caves in before the flare of her ribcage.
But I cannot slide my hand across her flesh
thwarted by her careful notations
deliberate cross-outs, graphite stroke
upon graphite stroke, adding her up
in ideas, burning thoughts into
apostrophes of spent rubber,
shapes unmade.
Yet the math of my palm--
this blunt, flat instrument—is exact.
It knows each equation, can calculate
every slope, can calibrate every
down-stroke, every movement
of this exercise in skin. The whorl
on my fingertip is a locus
computing distance, time, pressure--
rough elbow, ticklish arches,
meaty thumb, scarred knees--
here I will find myself
fully assembled, as my cells are pulled
to her: a burning where she and I meet
at the coordinates of need.
II. Night Light
Shifting on its foundation, the house
makes sounds. We know how
the floorboards will creak
under our feet, how noises
move front to back, our own jagged
explosions of breath traveling west to east
like the breeze that passes through
cuts and slips around her hips,
her jaw, her breasts—her shape
measured in currents.
I am sand
I am salt
I am water
fitting myself to her thigh
to her cheek
to her shoulder,
I wore her into these contours
even before I knew her.
Watch how the cradle of her pelvis
is shaped to take my touch:
my hand sits just so,
discovering hills and valleys, mapping
crenellations, altitudes, watersheds,
the currents beneath this landscape of flesh.
Lip and tongue give way
in the face of my patience.
A white rime of evaporated sweat,
waves upon the shore, the grains
carried in the wind—each of these my accomplice,
my force as inexorable as each of them
measuring her body in time,
eras and eons compressed like stones.
III. Alarm
I rise early, but sleep calls me back,
or maybe it’s her breathing: little explosions
that I can’t hear down the hall, through the door,
but which I know like a refrain, like
the rise and fall of my own chest.
When I stand in the doorway, dressed
for the day, she turns in bed, open-mouthed
to utter a whispered “I love you;
be careful” as though the words
don’t need shapes, as though she can’t
use her voice when she surfaces
out of a deep unconscious, as though
my desk job is perilous work--
spreadsheets claiming me, numbers
pouring from my mouth in a ticker tape;
projections, flow charts, pivot tables
rolling in my eye sockets like a cartoon
each a mirage of manipulation
the chiaroscuro of profit.
To creep back in, to crawl beneath
the sheet and hide with her
here is the danger: white skin, hair
dark against the pillow, careless
limbs taking my space and beckoning
me all at once--
this is where I must practice caution.
There is no warning on the sheets
no flashing lights, no safety belt,
no speed limit, no hard hat. How
to proceed in this
treachery of cotton?