BEFORE NIGHTFALL

In my dream I try to give you a piece of paper but you refuse.  In my dream I try to give you a larger piece of paper but you refuse.  Here, watch the objects file into the room, they position themselves along the periphery.  One of them claps her hands.  When they open their little mouths nothing happens but the occasional whisper.  Near the ceiling something shines brightly, the walls are surrounded with shuffling feet and sighs.  The objects wait patiently for me to speak to them.  One coughs quietly hoping I take notice.  One begins to cry soundlessly.  We are all so tired and the clock does not surrender.

Finally I say, there is much to consider.  Watch how the body refuses submission.  But they are objects and their hearts are closer to boxes.  Their hands remind me of doorknobs.

The sky unburdens itself and forgets it ever knew light.  The animals outside keep pawing away at the frozen ground.  For days the objects continue to wait for me. Very quickly we become a family, all the objects standing against the walls, all the whimpering and scolding. One early morning over coffee I ask one, what are you object?  What are you meant to mean?  The object becomes nervous, wrings her hands, closes her eyes several times.  She speaks to me in the lowest of whispers, stutters several times:  sunflowers, fields, an explosion of color, an apricot sky, just at the treeline, just at the moment of surrender, O brief-blinking, O little impulse, do I create you, do you create me, do we continue as we are, moving day, moving, moving?

Finally, everywhere, finally, there is a falling, finally.  My objects need jackets and for days I sew jackets the size of hands.  They are not grateful and want their own home, but I know that once they leave I will never see them again.  How do I continue?  See what is reflected in the window?  There are messages everywhere.  All around me only water that is light that is water and the objects clicking away circling and circling my brain.

Here there are many moments and I am unsure, the night, the snow-covered fields, the objects waiting next to the walls, but even in this quiet, even in this darkness, even in this there is so much, the cabinets, the doors, the things that should be put away, for now, the stairs, the rooms, the thoughts, for now, I pick up the phone and there is a voice that I do not know, there are the objects waiting for me, the outside is waiting, the quiet, the quiet body, the sounds speaking to themselves.  Can I wash this clean?  Somewhere an animal howls, the night does not surrender as the body surrenders.  Finally I put my objects in drawers.

The objects don’t understand a thing about this.  I don’t understand a thing about this.  Still, in the mornings, when I wake, I walk downstairs, I hear the small rustlings, I open the drawers and tell them, I want my body to forget itself, I want to open myself up and find all the things that have latched on.  Please do not latch on little ones, I am only this and that is all.

I wanted and I wanted and then?  Breath, unruly yearning, cobalt sky, peppermint mouth, the shock of touch.  The body is but container and all the scratching of the heart.  Where?  How?  And?  (And what of image?)  The objects are tucked away in their corners, all the edges cleanly cut, all the blood rushing through the veins, all the sighs and struggles to escape.  What creature has crawled inside my chest?  I open the front door and the animals are waiting, their eyes flickering in the dark moon-shadows, their sharp panting, the snow blue and ghostly.

One morning (the sky, the palest of pinks, the bare branches, the stream surrendering itself to ice, the moving, the movement, the slight trembling of pines) I decide it is time, the objects make their quiet moans, their desire for escape travels to me up the stairs.

The darkness becomes more important now.  What can still be hidden?  When memory is a scared bird ready to fly away, when memory is its own tragedy.  Ahead of us a shadow runs away.  The day is already darkening.  Only the sounds can be seen.  Something like escape happens.

Then I dream my neck is a country and everything is fenced off.  And all the surfaces scratch themselves clean.  And my body becomes its own map, or my body is merely a hanger waiting for something to be placed on it.  What is waiting for us in the distance?  Who can we ask to forgive this?  (The far-off beckoning, the rushing onward, away, the mind, the forgotten gesture, the boxed-away heart?) (The body is just an idea now.)  In my dream I leave the door open and walk away.  No, in my dream I leave the door open and never again return.

Carrie Bennett’s first book of poetry, Biography of Water, won the 2004 Washington Prize and was published by Word Works in 2005.  After receiving her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she moved to Boston where she currently teaches in the Writing Program at Boston University.  Her poetry has been published in Boston Review, Chelsea, Denver Quarterly, Interim, and Salamander, among others.  She lives in Arlington, MA with her boyfriend and their four cats and canary.