I.
They sleep on their stomach and this bed is only big enough
for one, so I wake up
with half my back pressed against theirs, a lazy
tessellation of limbs and oversized t-shirts. When I was twelve I said
I’d stay a virgin forever, never open my legs for some boy
following the demands of his cock. Funny
the promises you make when you don’t know better,
and the ones you keep when you do. I am listening
to fat globs of rain plop on patio tiles
like the slap of skin against skin. A beautiful
ugly closeness, a crude intimacy, picking at each other’s scars.
II.
Sometimes I watch them eat raspberries, picking off
each red drupelet individually, savouring, drawing out. I am learning
patience in these small gestures, drops
of water against stone. At nine
I ripped a sapling out by the roots
to understand my mother, how she grew anger
in place of love. I felt it then, the rush, the force chafing
against my hand, the sudden blank
freefall when it gave. Ten years on
I listen hopefully for their irregular flurry of footsteps
down the staircase, their wordless murmur
at the door – the days tumbling gently from my fingers
like glass beads shattering out of sight.
But I still flinch when the door opens
without warning, because I know
what makes a child hide in the garage, a girl
get in her teachers’ cars, a boy
leave home at eighteen and never look back.
III.
They sleep in my bed now and my father knows, awkwardly
letting himself out of my apartment with a goodbye
ridden with holes
they know they will never fill. But our first night
we lay awake with our sides pressed together, an unbearable heat
growing where we were joined, not friction
but a soldering iron’s searing kiss. I woke up half melted
in a puddle of old fears and new. Now I don’t know
which shape I have taken in my father’s eyes –
man learning patience, boy learning devotion, girl
learning to live on scraps of love. What I know
is six months ago I sat
on the end of their bed as they slept, trying not to grieve
for what had not yet been lost. Now their heartbeat in my ear
still makes me shiver, and I lie closer, lines of skin blurring
like memory and speculation – fear and nostalgia – train platforms
and apartment windows – until we are one
little girl sitting on the precipice, tears streaming
from her eyes, hugging herself tightly and not jumping.
