Because she has a jungle inside her and two savage rivers.
Because the flood season never left her. Her cheeks
ache with it. Her lungs are full of summer, that brutal season.
The water inside her used to murmur, You are both mortal
and immortal. But it’s gone quiet in this new country.
When she bathes, he hides the knives and listens at the door.
Because she is too good at surrender. Because she keeps a box
of his letters, thinks the spiked signature under Yours forever
is a contract. She tries to pray, but the voice that answers sounds so much like her own. She stops saying Amen
because she fears endings and starts to talk about
the jungle again - the smell of mud, the taste of snake,
how macaws cannot bear to lose their mate. If one dies,
the other collapses its wings, plummets to earth.
Because she closes her eyes when she tells this story.
Because he has always feared heights. Because at night
she crawls out onto the roof and watches streetlights
struggle through the night’s last hours. Because she wakes him,
her hands full of red feathers, and says, I’m yours forever.
Because when he holds her, he hears the rain break in her throat.
January 19, 2012, 1:21am
