by Mary Szybist

I simply can’t tell you how gentle, how touching she was.
I knocked, and she opened the door.
She was holding her hem in her hands.

I simply can’t tell you how gentle, howcalm she was
during her cooperation. In the windowless hallway,
I bent toward her.

She was quiet as a cloud.
She touched her mouth with her damp-smelling hand.

There was no lake behind us, no arbor in flame-flower.
There was a stone wall the dull white of vague orchards in bloom.

When she stood up to gather the almost erasable
scents into the damp folds
of her blue dress—

When she walked through the Rose Garden,
its heavy, dove-gray air—

There was something soft and moist about her,
a dare, a rage, an intolerable tenderness.

Her body looked like anyone’s body
paused at the edge of the garden.

How could I have known
what the sky would do? It was awful to watch
its bright shapes churn and zero
through her, knowing
she had nowhere, dizzy with
something un-breathable.