Secret

They talk with the lights off, / words kept in bedroom  dark so this  moment will  live
/  for only them.  They speak of finances and bedtime policies, /  whether they’ll need
to  move  for  more  space.  They  trade  names the  other  nixes  out  of  hand:  /  an old
boyfriend, a girl from fourth grade  who picked  /  her nose red every  other week,  the
Salinger character she’s always hated. /

                                                                                         He turns  quiet then, / and when she asks if
he’s mad she doesn’t like it,  he lies  /  there instead and shakes his  head No,  trying to
remember  what other names  /  he’d held  close to  him those  nights  he was  sixteen,
seventeen /  and lonely  in the  darkest  rooms  /  of his  heart,  waiting to touch,  to  be
touched. We’ll agree / on something. No need to rush, he manages and puts one hand
on hers,  his other  stretched  over her bellybutton,  settling  / for  comfort over truth. /
Who should we tell and when? he asks. /

                                                            Our moms first, maybe our fathers, too, in a few weeks. /
The rest, after we get into the second trimester, she says.  There’s much less chance…
She stops there, / the rest of her sentence she’d   rather not  catch  yellow light /  from
the streetlamp angling through the blinds. He knows enough to fill  /  the blanks,  but
he’s never  worried before  /  this  could be lifted from them.  He  takes  his hand  from
hers,    /   and  as  he  pretends  to  need  to  stretch  his  arm,   /  knocks on  the  wooden
nightstand, lightly,  /  a whispered plea meant to  be heard by  someone or something,
/ somewhere far outside this room.

Sleepless #1

No sleep, not tonight.  Not  for  her and  not  for  him.  /  Each  dose,  each  sip  of  water
heaves her  /  from bed to toilet.  She  has  become so   practiced  she  doesn’t need  /  to
flick the switch  to find  her way or have him hold  /  back her hair as bitterness  hurtles
out  her     throat.  /  She  hides   in  the   dark   like  he   can’t  /  hear   the  retching,  more
inhuman than familiar,  / as if suffering is only carried  through the world  /  by light. /

He wishes she would give him her  / blessing to surrender to the  long  day.  /  He  wills
himself  sleepless when he  hears her flush,  /  when she slips back in bed,  /  her  sharp
sighs exhaled into the air. He stirs,  at first,  making a show  /  he  might be   with her, /
minus the  throat burn  and acrid  taste  on her tongue,  /  her knees  bruised  from the
bathroom tile. He does not wake  /  enough to care for  her  how she  needs him.  He  is
already / breaking free.

Guilt

There is nothing  more he can  do for her;  they will  keep  her  /  for  observation,  give
her  more fluid,  /   inject  her  with  medication  as  she  needs.  / He still  doesn’t know
enough to be afraid  / or hopeful.  He  doesn’t  know whether  to  focus on  their  baby,
hanging / the photo on their fridge as reminder of what  will come, / or to  think  only
of her. All he knows  could fill  /  a thimble.  All he  knows  is maybe  /  tonight  he  will
stretch  across  their  bed as  he  hasn’t done  in weeks, /  fearful as he’s &been to touch
her  /  and wake her from whatever sleep she’s managed to make come.  /  It’s  enough
to have  him cry / Enough! because  how is it right to  look forward to a night’s peace /
when  she’s   hooked  to  a  machine  trying  to  guarantee  a  present   /   she  can barely
afford?

Deuteragonist

Alone to celebrate the third anniversary  of becoming a  couple,  /  he eases onto the
porch swing to rock / himself tired. He watches the neighbors’ houses begin to shut
themselves away:  / cars’   headlights  blink  twice,  horns  beep  them  locked,  / then
again when someone second-guesses. Houselights slump mute across the first floor,
/ the second once teeth are brushed, prayers said, books read,  / and moms and dads
slide into  bed,  fantasies  /  of a  second  wind never  winning  over  the quiet  /  dark
brings. /
                    This night, this moon shining lightly makes it easy for him to see  / himself
plain. He’s never been the protagonist, /  never comfortable as the center of his own
story. / Drifting to the outer limits of a party, a camera-shot, is second nature. She is
the life  /  of all the rooms they’ve ever entered,  he gladly playing second  /  fiddle as
she mingles, chiming in when she’s lost   /  a name or time, when she needs a second
opinion   /  on  that  Atlantic   article  she  loved  so  much she  couldn’t stop / reading
passages aloud to him. /

                                                     His first thought is love; / the second, loss. Overcome with
dread, he weeps and swears / his life for hers, witlessly, over and over again. / Soon
enough he will be pushed back to third, / this child forever her first mate.

Dreams

Each morning he works  to  remember  what  dreams  /  are like,  how  every   once  in  a
while he’d wake and feel  / such a dull ache  in his  center that it  hung  around  /   every
part of his day.  He’d  catch  a  glimpse  of a  boat  on the  dirt-green  Tennessee River,  /
hear   someone   say,   Oh,  I  give   up;  just  tell  me  what  he  did  next, / be  reminded of
his favorite teacher’s death that summer by the scent of Pall Malls, / and he’d be  taken
back: water flooding the boat  he’s  in,  /  sharks swimming near, but  still  he  refuses to
surface  /  because it’s  just too  hard.   And  then he’s  hovering /  over  his  own  funeral,
so many empty  seats it was easy  /  to see in the  front  row his first  crush, whose name
/ he saw so often in high   school  and  college  that  he believed  / the world  must  have
had a plan for them. /

                                                        He’s  had   nothing / like  this   for  a long  while.  No  need to
linger / in fantasy or nightmare when his mind hasn’t  taken / all  that’s  been  pent  up
in him and turned it / into  metaphor.  It’s enough   to  make  him  think /  everything’s
been backwards  /  because  how  could a  child hurt  its  mother  /  even before  its first
breath?  He’s long expected to  feel pain  /  in dreams,  which have always taunted  him
/ with what he’d never have, but not  in life, which  has  never  cared / to  acknowledge
him, one way or the other.