When you go to her
When you go to her, step silently across the carpet. When you go to her, her feet hang out from the ajar door. Her knees block the door from fully opening and a long vertical slit with your cheek against the damp doorjamb has her calves, the hollow behind her knee and pale veins, desert dry stiffening tendons, a heavy skirt over a sharp hip, with other shades of skirts worn for slips falling in scallops on tile, into a dress over her shoulderblade and hair spread across the floor before the bathtub. The water is high and lapping with the force of the running faucet hidden by the door. When you go to her the water in the bathtub is just about the profile of the rim where it rolls outward to form a lip. It doesnt raise or lower as the faucet runs. Her face has ocean eyes, the steam of water dreams in a sand sea. When you go to her, through a cascade of reflections, her eyes are shallow allusions. Their stillness is of eyes on a sand horizon watching for the sunrise.
You push high on the strike stile of the door. It gives in a dry elastic strain and then returns. Her feet topple. They are bare. You lean against the door jamb. Salt water and vinegar burn your lungs. Behind the door, when you go to her, nothing. All of the mysteries of closed doors bloom and choke your projections. Her feet and then, exquisite endless sand, the deepest emptiness, her face, a straight lipless line for a mouth, a high window and a dark line of hills and a purple sky.
