1.
Just above the right eyebrow
where I missed, getting into
the family car.
White crescent moons on my forearms
where my sister’s fingernails pressed in hard.
The silvery blur at the crinkled edge
of the backyard black and white
is me trying to get myself
out of the picture.
It’s a problem, where to go to cry
in a very small house. My sister’s eyes
and ears quickened after me.
I can swallow anything now
without making a sound.
2.
The glossy dent around the finger
from the twenty-five year ring.
Glassy skin of the bathroom mirror
where you could not feel your face
before you went downstairs and let him
get away with everything.
The made bed, the unmade kitchen
the lamp slammed to the floor
the stain on the rug, the stain on the sheet
the broken wall.
The skin gone soft and pocked
around the mouth is how worry taps
and taps at the face and keeps the mouth
from what it would say.
There is a posture of shrinkage
in which it all draws in
and the husband and the sister
win.
3.
In the waiting room before they can tell you
what has gone wrong, they give you
a drawing of a body, like an outline
drawn in chalk on the floor, only this one
they’ve made is straight and strong.
Mark in blue, the instructions say,
the places that are numb.