How to Split

How to Split

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest

breathing…

                                David Whyte

                                Sometimes

While I slept ten steps

away and across the hall

they came

into your room first

to shake you

two by the shoulders

two by the face and make you

sorry for

what you’d done.

Maybe you didn’t

know what they were

talking about

at first maybe

there were so many

things your brain

was a lit pin

ball machine and the little

steel

balls banged and lit

and slammed and each

time you didn’t know

they hit you

harder they pulled

your hair

your blankets

they changed you and changed

you and early on

you crumpled and curled

your elbows and fists

over your neck

and head you were

the shape

of an ear when they were through

with you.  While

I slept I didn’t

sleep I waited for them

to be gone tomorrow

would be my turn and I went

when the lights

were out

across that hall to gather

what was left and what

had fallen

onto a while washcloth

starting with your mouth

split

and then your eye

split

and then your fending

hand and wrist

where the piss

dripped and you’d tried

to stop them

and the puke

but you could not

while they

while my other sister

while my brother

slept I tended to you I tipped

up and down the stairs

with cloth after cloth

to wash and I have to say

it was at the crotch

  

I started

to cry I started but held

on I held on

I was myself again

I was alone there was no

one I wasn’t split

so bad it’s not so bad

where I was

mending

where came back together

and the cool stained

cloth held me on the edge

of the linoleum while the house

while everyone else

who would never

could ever know

slept and slept

they slept