Power

How do they do it? She cannot bend her legs.

Here I go, I must see him propping up her legs some way onto his shoulders, or with some contraption that they have had to devise, or do they simply put a bunch of something under her hips, or does he get into her from behind when they are lying down? or something else so obvious, but I don’t know. She sits in his lap in a chair? and does it hurt her, because it is awkward? or do they even bother to try, because it is never fun? Or does she do it for him some way with her mouth? How would she do it that way?

Her legs shine under the mesh nylon of her hose. I look right at her legs when she says, “Oh, these legs.” I do not know these people, the husband, and the wife, or the driver of this car that we are all paying to please get us home. At least, I know I have been away.

I do not know where to begin with this injury—with the sharpness of her nose which seems to solve some­thing, the brightness of the light shooting off from her lacquered cane, or her laughing many more times than once, so that her husband said to her, “What is the matter?” or her ever-constant soft drawing up of a breath through her nose—once, then twice, and then pause—the sense of the stupid loss of time, that for once did not matter to me.

I thought, Let us keep on at this looking for the house they are looking for. It does not matter that the driver of the car cannot find it. Once I thought that.

She said to me, “I did not mean to throw my cane at you.”

The door of the car had opened, the cane had been flung by someone onto the seat toward me, then her body. She had flung her body onto the back seat the wrong way—flat out and on her back—because of her problem, her big problem, her husband’s bigger prob­lem, their terrific problem.

She said, “No, this is not it,” whenever the driver beamed a light on a house.

I said, “It is so dark.” Finally, I said angrily, “Is this even the street?”

The driver said, “Yes!” and then I saw locust in block black letters on a white sign on the corner at just that moment when the driver spoke.

She said, “No, this is not it.”

When finally it was the house—those relatives, those people up there who came out onto that cement porch, who maybe call themselves friends, were not happy enough to receive their guests. That chirruping woman with her arms around the other woman didn’t fool me. Nobody fooled me, but probably somebody was being fooled.

At least I knew where I lived. I could say to the driver, “Straight east now, and then left at the light.” I could say it and say it and keep on with it, even with a righteous sense of anger—thank God—with a sense of—You listen to me! This is how you get somewhere!

But all this is not about failed love.

Somebody please tell me that this is all about some­thing else entirely which is more important.

Somebody smarter and dearer than I, be the one available for my best, my most tenderest embrace when I have been convinced by you.

I could be a believer.