Old Beds and Hollywood

The day I left my house
for another home, the sky
was pink. I could hear
the first train or the last
in the distance. As if it was
any other morning, I’d made
my bed in the den where
I’d been sleeping to feel
in my body, too, alone—
my husband snoring behind
our old bedroom, and I
stepped around his breath
the way as a girl I used
to step from my room along
my father’s expirations,
heel to toe, each arc of each
of my feet muscling to
the next catch and release
of his nose and diaphragm,
my body sliding out only
at each extended blow
and whimper. My father
slumbered so loudly I could
never hear my mother’s
sleep, and even at night,
with his forearm strung
over the flattened bridge
of his nose and his forehead,
all joists trembled to him
from behind the plaster,
my father’s tempo leading
me slowly down the hall
to his office, where, circled
in the blue glow of his small
T.V., I watched old scenes:
Annette Funicello folding
an orange sweater, singing
“I’ll never change him,” or
Doris Day on the party line,
the screen split to their two
pillows, and at the left, Doris:
her cheeks more gauzy
than the gown ruffling
her pink wrists, the phone
bigger than her round, flushed
face. I liked to lay on
my stomach as I watched
them, the women with hair
brushed and brushed, even
in bed, the delicate gates
of their lips as each resisted—
and the way too the men in
those films grabbed the women
who were insulting them,
until words turned in
-to struggle, then transformed
to desire—and I could
feel the carpet against
my shirt, my father still
snoring past the dark under
-seam of the door, my hands
in my thick hair, guessing
how a man might grip
my ears—and the films always
seemed to end at kiss, even
if there was a wedding after,
or if husband and wife
were later seen smoothing
the sheets of their separate,
twin mattresses—: it wasn’t
the home which mattered,
nor the chamber, but the kiss,
that moment I imagined was all
a woman wanted, couldn’t
live without, his body surfing
her body under, until hers
turned to the dark and foamy
water beneath his larger,
insistent wave, until there
was nothing left of her
but what rolled into him,
the current of his body
crushing, and overwhelming,
the gulf of his pull deaf
-ening as an oncoming train.