Slow dancing at the Med-Inn

It's the night before your mastectomies.

I'm sitting on the end of the bed.
(We got the faded-orange-curtain-40-watt-lightbulb-
green-chenille-bedspread room.)

From the shower,
you suddenly loom over me,
smelling of peppermint soap and wet leaves
around the lake in the fall.

Holding a breast in each hand,
as if restraining the flight of doves,
you press them to my face and erupt into tears.

I touch my lips to one, then the other,
falter at the scent of my self -
the joyful signature of my fingers and hands.

I pull your body hard to mine,
as if to hurt will help to heal.

The room fades in and out like a bad radio.

The baseboard heater tick tick ticks.

Outside, the helicopter walloping on the roof
lowers a burned child,
stars explode across the night,
volcanoes rise from the ocean floor,
wobble the earth on its axis.

Except for our breathing,
we dare not move.

A courtesy acknowledgment to:
F. Richard Thomas, Death at Camp Palooka, Michigan State University Press, 2000