Two afghans lie folded at the bottom edge
of the bed we share—they unravel gradually,
pawed at by time and the dog’s nervousness,
but they hang together still—I cannot recall
when your late mother knitted and gifted them.
Nights too cold for just the comforter
I’d wrap the extra warmth around you,
mounded beneath layers, hidden under
the distant mountain range of sleep,
while outside the wind sounded its notes
through the wire-stark branches
of bare trees, and these scraped metallic
against the screens—drama in the darkness,
as we huddled, childlike, curled and near fetal,
in postures our bones retain from infancy.
Histories curl within us, like strands of DNA,
like molecules interwoven in electric vibrations,
and we pause and curl, and reach out to join
our histories intertwined without awareness,
when in darkness we become each other in ourselves.
No one records, but us, the phantom ambient light
remaining in the room despite heaviness of night,
no one records the half-sleep, half-dreams we carry
past even memory—there is no archive of the night
but the sound of the covers over our stirrings,
the branches a bit frantic now with messages,
the history that we write on the palms
of each other’s hands, the touch of your knee,
against my thigh—not secret but unknown,
we breathe the only history of us.
Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, including 2River, The Bellevue Literary Review, Blood and Thunder, The Closed Eye Open, Dappled Things, The Examined Life, The Healing Muse, La Piccioletta Barca, Lifelines, Natural Bridge, Please See Me, WLA, Work, and The Write Launch. He has also published creative nonfiction in New Letters and The North American Review. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs) that has been accepted by Finishing Line Press.