Bed Cairn

Easy linen parts the bright window. Your hands have stopped
and you place your face in them. Outside, just below the window,
dandelions burst. Sometimes the songs you sing
in the wind make sense because I do not belong with you.
What the floor knows about us is that we rock
together and apart, whether alone or not,
serrated on edge and sinking into our bones.

The conch shell we found sits on the bed. I am not ready
to listen to the sea so when I place it to your ear,
the notches of its skeletal ancestry dig into your lobes.
Later, there is only the sound of your flapping
the sheets, the buzz of your skin shifting under the covers,
and my breathing like old wood.

Copyright © 2002 Joddy Murray All rights reserved
from The Pikeville Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission