| Nancy
Cherry
The
Shape of its Leaving
A
hat full of light sat on our bed.
No
one knows who put it there.
No
one knows who took it away
or
if it put flowers to shame while it waited.
For
years I did not think I could live with the hat
emptied
of everything: no forehead
beneath
its brim, no eyes, no thoughts, only
morning
leaking from somewhere deep in the crown.
Once
I was tempted to touch the hat,
its
felt, a green band that accented
the
night. Sometimes I could hear it breathing
while
light shot out like piano chords.
No
one replaced the strings that broke
beneath
the beat of hammers.
The
hat sat on the bed and was ignored.
And
the light never changed.
It
did not pulse. It did not reflect.
It
did not turn on us in the bedroom
but
went up and up as the hat rested
closer
to the foot of the bed
than
to the pillows.
No
one knows when the hat went away,
if
it went out of style, if it was stolen
or
if someone, one of the two of us,
who
lived alone in the house with the hat
put
it away like an artifact of no value that sends
signals
to the ceiling and gets no answer.
Even
now I forget the shape of its leaving,
fedora,
sombrero, bowler, something
that
can cup blood without letting it
smear
the sheets. Sometimes I walk
down
the close streets, ones that run
down
the bias of town and something
hooks
my eye, a feather, fingernail, petal
and
I turn toward the slim edge
but
it is nothing. It is never the hat.
No
one knows who took the hat away.
No
one knows how to get it back.
It
must have walked out in daylight
wrapped
in sun like a towel
about
its waist while a key
dropped
down my throat.
For
years I prayed into the well of our hat
thinking
it might edge a little higher
up
the quilt, send the stark rays into our hearts
or
make lettuce grow. But nothing changed
as
the walls bent with the weight of night
and
the ceiling cracked.
If
you saw the hat now, would you know what hat
I
am talking about? Not the hat your grandfather wore
with
its grey days; not the hat my father wore
with
its sweat of oak. Not the hat of walking
or
the hat of age, but the last hat on the bed
tipped
up, leaking the oil of everyday, sweet lemon
and
olive light that you carried into the shower,
that
I carried into breakfast, that we carried into bed.
But
we never discussed the hat.
There
are a thousand flowers in my life now and birds
that
open like small boxes of polished mahogany.
There
is a keyhole in each breast. There is nothing inside.
For
years, a hat full of light sat on our bed,
a
queen-sized bed with matching sheets,
four
pillows and a fire in each one.
I
lean on the bed and listen to the rustle
of
birds deep in the mattress.
They
are coming unwound and I name them:
mocking
bird, mourning dove, sparrow.
I
hear their muffled calls as the seams bulge.
In
the bedroom, someone has taken the ceiling off.
No
one knows who did this.
No
one even knows if there was a house
built
on the diagonal, if there was a hat
on
our bed that could open like a bird,
broken
and cat-weary. You pick up the phone
nearly
every day now, dial my number
and
whisper hat, hat, hat.
The
Hammer
There
is a hammer lying on the floor of my bedroom.
I
want to pick it up but I don't pick it up because
this
would be a digression.
If
I pick up the hammer,
it
will leave an impression, hammer-shaped, in the rug because
it
is heavy and has lain there all night.
It
will look as if the hammer is still there
even
after I have walked out of the room and put it
away
in the toolbox.
The
carpet will not let go of its hammer-shape; it is not grass
that
will gradually lift itself after a night of heavy sleep.
It
will only stand up if I run my fingers through the fibers
or
vacuum; and if I vacuum, I will not stop
with
the foot-square shape of hammer, but will run through the house vacuuming
carpets and no one will remember
there
was a hammer.
Last
night I brought the hammer into the bedroom
to
unstick the window swollen with winter
because
I was beginning to suffocate as the barometer dropped toward rain.
Even
now, though I am in the kitchen and it is raining at last,
I
am thinking about the hammer and what it is doing alone
in
the bedroom pressing carpet fibers to the floor.
It
presses silently and does not move in any direction
except
down. It does not inch toward home but plows
through
my thoughts with the claw end made for prying
and
getting things unstuck
and
what will I discover inside but another toolbox
full
of anxious hardware: the screwdrivers, the pliers and wirecutters and an
empty space at the back
for
the hammer.
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