Sugar House

Pears & fever.

That night has never finished happening. My father is still carrying me from the car across wet grass. I’m watching the dark over his shoulder; the Hunter, raised to strike.

I

The fever came in through the eyes.

My father’s eyes were lakeblue. In his black pupils, children ran through the forest to the sugar house. The rings around his pupils –

pebbles lit by the moon –

II

Orion, still raised.

III

My father’s gait entered me through his shoulder.

His jaw worked against the sky. The cold came up off the grass and the stars swung in time with his steps. Somewhere above, Venus burned and the flame of it was inside me.

IV

All April the pear tree

blossomed on bare wood.

I watched it from the window.

V

My mother peeled and sliced and said nothing. The pear came apart in her hands; I ate from her fingers one piece at a time.

VI

The cold air came in through the window. My skin caught it in the damp cotton twisted around my thighs.

VII

The fever

moved through me.

My hands gripped the sheet.

Something with wings kept crossing the sun.

I couldn’t name it but its shadow

passed through me too.

*

I

The tree in April, still in cold fire.

II

Mother turned a page without reading it. On the nightstand, a bowl of sliced fruit.

Outside, a rabbit screaming as it’s taken –

and I was at the window,

four-footed, low to the ground,

nose full of mud and kill and bloom –

III

I have learned how a room changes when someone in it is frightened; objects hold their positions carefully. My mother’s hands never hurried.

IV

The night returns.

I see the tree, the hands.

My father carrying me across the wet grass,

who doesn’t do that anymore,

my mother peeling the pear in one motion,

who still sometimes peels pears that way.

I want to say all of it exactly,

but it’s taking me again –

let the pear tree say it,

blossoming every April on bare wood,

and don’t let my father know

I remember the rhythm of his walking,

how it entered me through his shoulder,

and don’t let my mother know

that I was memorising her hands.

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