visions of my mother, four in the morning.

you sit unresponsive in a dense bed
as your lovers coaxe you into nothingness.
his arm, a heavy house, pulsing over your heart.
he will breathe for you.
because you suddenly want to escape that house.
you suddenly want to be something very small and very dark.
you apologize for your complexity
and escape to your quill pen
because hearing him love you
makes you remember you have to be real again.
so you let him drift away to the dreamy place he goes.
and you suddenly feel your neck against
your mother's warm calf.
and she brushes away your furies with her
breezy fingers in your curling hair.
you don't know where you are but
his song takes you back to the womb
where your mother told you it would
be okay, it is okay.
And he reminds you.

You will be a pretty girl
who breathes quickly at night,
under coarse light,
spaces air tight
between your lungs and the stars.

the only reason the bed is breaking, he says,
is because we have been sitting too long in it.