Where did you wear them?
Not, certainly, to rattle the range
or skin potatoes at the outside tap.
Not to comb my ponytail,
the musk of a Major clouding
the short, warm space between us.
Not in that dream, buried alive,
black clay beneath your nails,
dark-gloved with your lost children.
Like the stepsister, too big
for happiness, I squeeze fingers
inside narrow darkness,
fish for the past:
no curtain-collapse, no earth-inch,
the keyholes whisper Gone.
Your swampy bones will not shawl
themselves in flesh. Your scent, laugh
both time-murdered.
My cousin swears I crawled
under the table to hide
from your ungloved rage.
Did that really happen?
I cannot imagine your hands
sheathed in this stolen, creamy hide,
though a tan stain on index tip hints at use.
My attempts to remove it
ruin the leather.
A killing in the cleaning.
