That's What That Is

When my grandma got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandpa does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis. That’s love.
—Rebecca, age 8

I.

She preferred frosted mochas, whispering blood wines,
hues that burst against her skin. It was all the color
she could manage, brash dollops of the lostago dribbling
their borders, smashed still wet into stern and sterner
lace-ups. Now, behind a bathroom door swollen shut,
she gasps and bends, prays light into her arms. The effort
breaks her, the clockwork of body stunning in wretched
loop. To drown her panting, she flushes, flips loose all
the faucets, whimpers beneath flow. After an hour, still
vaguely hooked but craving sashay, she limps to him,
unfurls on the couch and buries all of her fail beneath
the nappy chenille throw. No, there is no gorgeous here.

II.

Patient for my dinner of cream and meat, I grumble
caress toward the still, defeated bloom of her, brush
my mouth against the wisps escaping her silver braids.
Then, because I was born during a war and I am a man,
I grab the remote, disappear for a beer. I know so well
the wreckage to the south of my woman. I know her
ravage, her stilted muscle, the pain that roars through
her like the verb of something feral, I know the night
silence. So I lock into Bringing Up Baby, insane frolic
on the flickering Philco, and I steel against the fetid
blasts of sleep from her open mouth. She has given up
on so much of her engine. Reaching beneath the blanket,
I trace and re-trace the arch of a fat, unfinished foot.

III.

I am a stranger here. Faced with gummy bottles of coral,
ice, scar, fire engine, grape, redberry, carnation and earth,
I suddenly realize that being a man has siphoned away
the exploding in how I see. I am not privy to this stark,
these raucous pinchings upon a woman’s dead flesh.
Envious of its blooming, I choose an improbable pink,
and move back to where she sleeps, spittle and whimper,
her body smalling. I work her toes like I am conjuring
the new—massaging, molding, drenched in her dim
disbelieving. I dip the brush deep and lift a thick bubble
of awkward spring, then sweep until she throws back her
head and weeps an O. The clock in my hand is kindled,
furious with this, but I am careful not to break my rhythm.
I stay to my task. Her hand rests on the back of my head.