OUI/ICU

OUI/ICU

Innocence is what we allow

to be gifted back to us

once we’ve given ourselves away.

                                                                                Ten Years Later

                                                                                David Whyte

While I slept you drank and then

you slept too and sometime in the night

we met we must’ve I took off

your shoe the left one first I always stared

there and then the next one

and you let me but only when you drank

and it was not as toxic as memory

would make it you came back into

your body from wherever it was you went

when you began

to drink while we were at school and your

husband was away and sometimes you drove

and one time collided head-

on trying to navigate that tight inside S

(but now that I think about it I think maybe

you were on your way

home so that meant you were not on the inside

or weren’t supposed to be) and maybe she's
the one who drifted maybe she did no one knows

or ever will but you went into her grill

and she went into the wind-

shield because who then ever considered

seat-belts it was you and her the most

intimate you’d ever let yourself get

with another woman

and you don’t count me you don’t

coming home from school putting you to bed

on the couch

then set to peel potatoes to wash and boil

and bring a bit of fat to the heat and let the meat

fry crusty the way you liked it

when you were awake when you could make

drunk look right

at home and we’d sit down to the supper

I’d made and you’d touch your face

and the gauze and your ribs and the bruises

and your broke open knee

what you’d said hit the dash maybe the same

time her head hit the glass

and you were both over and under

one another exploding the whole town

and the whole island in gossip while we ate and waited

or while we watched TV and waited

or while we were in school and waited

and nobody told us we’d be alone for a while

or maybe somebody did they thought to

check in to make sure the beds were clean

and supper was put away and say maybe

they’d let you stay in the hospital all the way through

to Monday maybe they’d discharge you

after the weekend if you had a ride home

if someone could go

and get you and help you

with your shoes while you slept while I slept

and you drank and drank

even after that accident

and the next one that took you over the steep

bank you never stopped falling you never stopped