What could I, those blank nights (besides nothing) picture?
Like, the coming attractions, like any future…
Black & white photos tacked across each wall—
They seemed utterly real;
& all those scissored-out prints & icons
Were windows, & weren’t embellished with curtains,
Were frames cut into in my house,
Were scenes I came to, face-to-face.
Life & lovers captured in 8 x 10 squares
And I contemplated them, darkly, from a hard-backed chair.
They embodied, across my off-white walls, fictions.
But were they premonitions?
Beyond both the real & the made-up windows
Existed (as in these later days I know),
Somewhere else,
Where someone else (though between my house
And yours was space like the minutes inside a theater
When everything’s suspended in whispers
Until the curtain rises)—
You, Emily, as you prayerfully washed your dishes.
Above you was pinned a postcard of the Virgin,
Mailed from somewhere organic & Latin.
Late nights, over the phone, you told stories,
Off-color, and heisted from movies—
Like “house dick,” like “high windows,” like “a mother…”
But I couldn’t get the picture.
Instead I watched my walls unreeel vignettes
While you said your prayers to chipped plaster statuettes
You brought home from dime stores.
Meantime, the future projected a double feature
Up against the wall, as if through a window
We might have come through whole.
Picture this… in either home
We might, in the flesh, have called each other by name,
And not like onscreen lovers. Then it would matter;
This picture would move. Bear with us, Vivid Mother.
Jack Hayes
© 2010
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