WATCHING A LEAF FALL I CANNOT SEE

At the market, the man with his hand

in the boy’s mouth is missing.

‘Where is my house

when I am here?’ I ask my friend.

All this is spoken in gestures

I am too tired to perform.

The boy will be mute

in a case this morning or left as fabric

strung over a kitchen chair.

I unfold the bed and lay myself across it.

I cannot find it in me to rise.

A bath towel I hung in the window

serves to block out light. Outside, there

is a crossing sign with a lever that rises

and falls in front of the metal rails.

If I could see the sign through the window,

I would go and stand under it. The metal contraption

that blows by would be out of date

and I would still watch it pass. While the rattling exists,

we are held back and saved. I am waiting

for the leaf to let go. The towel is left

in the window. The leaf is a gesture I cannot see.

I will not know when it falls or

what this might mean. The sound will not

be loud enough to hear. My friend wants to drop

coins into the case where the boy used to be.

She wants to drop coins when there is a hollow

where the boy is missing and the man

is moving the boy’s mouth. She believes

the boy can speak for himself or

the man can speak for him and she imagines

it is enough.