I am standing making noise
in the group of carolers. At first
I was afraid you’d catch me
staring—have you never
seen adults singing?—
but you do not seem to feel
my eyes on you at all. We’re singing
in the odds-and-ends space
front and center of the store,
where they keep non-staples,
bright plastic, things
you don’t need. The red foils
wrapped around pots of poinsettias
spill earth at our feet.
When I got here, Mike
was ringing the bell,
bland-faced and gentle.
Its tinning inflated my brain
to maddening pressures. I used
stark staring when I asked him to stop.
He seems unharmed,
but I feel I have injured a sacred thing.
His buzz-cut hair glints
like straw left in the field
to help the new wheat grow.
I look up and you are there, looking
beyond us, with your lips a little apart.
I feel naked as a bell freshly cast.
Are you breathing? Make sure
you breathe. I went on a field trip
to a glassblower’s once
and Nicky, who was built
much more sturdily than you are,
grew so fascinated she stopped
inhaling, fell over with a thunk
just as the man pulled ears and a tail
from the glass horse’s body.
The little mouth-blown horse: pale peach
and much less fragile than it looks. Hardy
as my fake front tooth, the real one snapped
on black tile when Benjamin
twisted my arm behind my back
and tripped me, after I pushed him
for cutting in line. The dentist fixing it said
This won’t stay on long; it’s just plastic.
That was sixteen years ago.
I cried when the tooth broke: terror
of permanent damage,
shock of air on bare nerve.
Was that where I learned
to keep my mouth closed,
for safety? It is open here,
attempting harmony
on tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy, but just now a woman
sped past behind you,
because we sang to save us all
from Satan’s pow’r. She is at the door,
looking as though she wishes she’d brought
earplugs for her toddler.
People pass with diet rootbeer,
lightbulbs, bread in their wire carts.
Your skin is pale and your hair mousy,
like mine. Will you learn stillness
as camouflage, learn not to listen
with your mouth open?
Before you got here, I requested “I Wonder
as I Wander,” but it’s so steeply minor
everyone lost heart after three bars.
We are emphatically not out under the sky.
When I was seven my father asked me
what life is. I felt a trick
and looked at him impatiently: Things
are alive or they aren’t.
He looked back. How can you tell?
—Well, when they’re dead
they don’t breathe.
You must be breathing
because you have not
passed out. Are you sad?
When I hold still like that
I usually am. Sad,
but not dismal. When I step out
into the sharp emptiness
of the parking lot, under
the sky, after your father
and brothers have returned
with huge muffins to share, and you
have left—when I accept
a ride home, barely able to answer
questions because every nerve
in me is ringing
so loud I fear
opening my mouth
for even one syllable
will make me sob
and not stop—when I get out,
climb the stairs, fumble
for my ribbon with the single key, and stand
with woodsmoke from outside
still in my nostrils, hat
and boots on, amber street lamps
gleaming along the grain
of the living room floor,
I will be unable
to turn on the light, unable
to unbutton my coat,
unable to close my mouth:
listening, listening, listening.