"Generous I may have been, amnesiac

I became. Autumn fattened and thinned;
I stared at the clock's senseless hands.
I let the girl in the market make change.
I looked at my lists of medicines
and the bottles on the shelf, but they
seemed separate. In the bathroom mirror
my face was suddenly antediluvian who
was I? I'd be thinking and at the first touch
of attention, I'd forget. I cut my own hair.
I saw my mother wrapped in a mantilla
in her coffin. Why did I find my skin's
imperfections so interesting and pick off
moles? If I went to the end of the street,
would I be at the center of myself?
Insects watched me. They got in my hair.
I'd be at the opera house in Vienna.
The planes strafed the Strassenbahn.
My hands fluttered then like butterflies.
For a little while I knew—there was a door,
a split in the wall, and I was two persons,
old and young, wise and clean, sturdy and
bent, generous and dead. They were
neck on neck like winter and spring
but could do nothing for each other.
I'm leaving, I know, each said,
a flooding darkness in their eyes,
a drawing down of blinds. Afterward
my feelings were the eyes of moths.
They . . . What is the word between eyes
and too little light? I knew. I think so.
Meanings fissured. Words hollowed.
It was like the thing with bees—
I swatted in front of my face
and hated them. Then there were none."

Copyright © 2010 Carol Frost All rights reserved
from Honeycomb
Triquarterly Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission