%20luminous_hands_landscape.jpg)
I
By then she kept the other pillow
upright between them. Cheap flock,
a zip that scraped her wrist.
Beyond it he breathed through the gap
in a chipped tooth.
Leave room, she said.
He moved his knee.
Below her ribs the marks
had stopped resembling fingers:
three shallow arcs, the widest
continuing beyond the skin
as a buckle in the bedside rail.
She knew the alloy.
It should have split.
She had once repaired such beds,
found the trapped cable, freed
the motor from its stupid effort.
Now she slept without a reading.
At breakfast he held out her sleeve,
yellow seam uppermost.
She put her arm through it herself.
The rail straightened while he waited.
Her ribs kept the bend.
II
The sleeve opened into a fitting bay.
Same yellow seam. No windows.
A woman there measured
the space her arm refused to enter.
Leave room, the woman said,
feeding that clearance into the cuff.
Pain eased at once. Beneath the film,
a grey grid tightened
only when her hand went near
the second chair.
She could lift a pan. Turn a key.
The charge renewed each night.
She took the small relief.
Signed where the strip went green.
The woman sold her soap
that wouldn’t interrupt transmission.
It smelled of boiled cloth.
On the receipt a blank for contact
filled itself with the dent
his elbow made in the mattress.
The paper warmed
along a fold she had not made.
III
Across the fold he ate his dinner.
An image. Salt at the rim
of the lens. She could turn him down.
Leave room, the border said.
She widened it. The table shrank.
His spoon arrived at his mouth
a fraction after the swallow.
A loose thread on his cuff
kept rising, falling, rising.
When his hand came forward,
only pixels touched the glass.
She kept him at that distance
all through the rent reminder,
the heating fault, the evening
he warmed her socks inside his shirt.
Still warm, he said. He held them up.
She enlarged the socks
until his fingers left the frame.
The wool showed every stitch.
She could follow a single strand
to the border without once
crossing skin.
IV
The border ran beneath a plain
of shallow basins. She followed
the yellow seam along the ridge
between two hollows, past the mouth
of a third, where light went in
and stayed against the wall.
Leave room, the seam repeated,
its stitched commands receding
past the last position
she could mark with a thumb.
The dates beside the basins
advanced by centuries
while the soap under her nail
stayed wet.
Three smooth undersides
hung clear of their sockets.
Stars showed through the needle holes.
She swallowed.
They moved one hole along.
Below her feet the bed rail bowed.
She knew that pitch of metal,
the brief complaint before a joint
became a hinge.
Her cuff had room for two more notches.
V
She found the release under her tongue.
A tab. The same cheap plastic
as the pillow zip.
Leave room, said her own voice,
from the chair she had left empty.
She bit through it. The grid went out.
Four breaths without the hum.
The edge nicked her gum.
She swallowed before he could see.
The socks lay damp across his lap.
She tasted copper at the chipped edge
of his tooth. Her own were whole.
He touched his mouth.
Her tongue met the finger.
She knew how to isolate a circuit:
unplug, discharge, test for current.
The severed tab lay on her knee.
He flexed a finger.
She waited for her own
to stop.
VI
The plain folded between them.
Cheap flock. She laid it flat
beneath their wrists,
zip toward the wall.
The sleeve hung loose,
its last green square extinguished.
He started to ask.
She shook her head.
Leave room, she said,
and spread his fingers
over the three arcs, leaving
a little slack at each knuckle.
He let her arrange him.
She had forgotten this:
how long a hand could remain
unhelpful, heavy, available,
while its owner waited.
Her pulse knocked at his thumb.
She counted until she lost it
in the friction of his sleeve.
The rail took back the bend.
His palm began to warm.
Far down the yellow seam
she felt the first catch seat.
She drew the trapped fold
out from under his wrist.