My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer

Waiting for his love to take, I held him clumsily. His face was without form and darkness moved upon it. I was told: You must keep him still for six days. I needed to be sure he did not try to leave, so I asked: Let there be light, and the sanatorium became light and it was a soft yellow light, and good to his features. He was thirsty on the second day so I said: Let there be water apart from the earth, and a glass of water appeared at his bedside, and it was good clean water and he drank it as though its existence were not a miracle. He drank it like he was impartial to dying a general death. He drank as if I were not watching him, imagining how someday I would let him go, and it was good, good he didn't know I was already dreaming of my solitary reinvention. On day three he became hungry and agitated so I begged let there be grasses bearing seed and also some fruit from a tree as sensuous as a woman he imagines when he enters me, and thus a peach became visible and I fed him,and all in all it was a pretty good show. On the afternoon of the fourth day the beasts were called, creeping things that frightened me and fowl and cattle beneath the window of the sanatorium, grazing passively, grazing on really good grass. Day five he coughed like a badger clawing a warren where I hid, hedging my bets, living in my fur as I was granted control over all of the beasts and thus fashioned myself something warm and attractive from the rabbit. And it was good, looking good, even though I was afraid. He called out some names on the sixth morning. He said barstool and dispatch and megawatt and Thermopolis, and all of these things became as he called them and it was good, it was good to have a list. Later that evening, after he described fortitude and unctuous he said a word I had not heard before but it made my teeth ache and a slow itch spread down my forearm and I thought I felt a dainty woman wearing one of those fuzzy pastel sweaters with a plunging neckline standing close to me—her soft breath against my neck—and I wanted to kiss someone really bad but also to remain still forever so that this feeling might be known to anyone who happened upon me. He said Helper and he made a motion with his hands, like he was breaking an egg onto a hot frying pan while a hissing sound emerged from his mouth, after which he lay back on his bed with his arms thrown across his chest like dirty laundry. Although I knew not of dirty laundry at the time, I understood he was naming me and it was good. It was good to place my head in my very own hands, which were not as I imagined them—hatch batten downers, Pious, wincing shovels—but as he named them: Your Hands. And with this knowledge I rested. I dreamt sweetly.