mauve towers

spring break by anne carson

One April we drove all the way from Canada to Carolina my father mother brother and I.

Stayed in a motel sand in the sheets sand in the car sand in our pockets months after we got home.

Ocean air plush as kissing or the secret parts of plants secrets were dropping out of us there.

Walking through a restaurant all together to our table past eyes and sugarbowls we realized-

same moment he did - my brother’s shame of us.  We saw girls notice him, stiffening their backs.

Loneliness hit.  It bleached our lips.  I like the word caesura but I didn’t know it then.

We knew tans.  Fates.  Finery!  Finery among us.  We drove home.  Parked in our quiet driveway

(the forsythia had bloomed).  Went into the kitchen.  Stood with our bags.  Hum of the clock on the stove.

My mother put down two crates of oranges beside the fridge.  Straightened up, hand on her back.

Fish sticks for supper? she said to no one in particular.

i am only ever vaguely satisfied by the dumb rhymey ones

in down and dawnlight’s white vignette
you stir and shift to silhouette
your hip backlit as proust would say
by morning’s first “correcting ray”
alas it won’t be very long
before that beam casts all things wrong
so with these precious moments left
let’s settle back into the cleft
and midst the mottled air watch float
a single bright ascending mote
which darts and dips and faintly shakes
through silence let’s hope never
i know i know i hear i will
but wouldn’t it be better still
to lie forever, soft diffused
in interstices of the snooze