Awake Again

The house has been practicing without me.The light comes in with its warrant for my head.Every morning I stack myself like plates on a cracked shelf and carry the stack to the window.

Father is eating at the table. He eats the table first, then us.Nobody clears his plate. His mouth is never called to testify.Father says it once. Nobody answers. Father says it twice. Mother puts down her fork.By the third time everyone remembers agreeing.

Mother is the napkin folded at his wrist.She catches what he cannot swallow and calls it love.She has a chair of her own, the one beside his. She would give me anything but that.

And the rest of you, my blood, a bench of borrowed robes, gavels cut from the good silver.You got his tongue for nothing. You never had to be a father to use it.You walk into rooms already agreeing with yourselves.You try me on holidays. The sentence is always dessert.

One of you has keys to something. You don't know what they open.You turn them in your pocket, pleased that someone else must knock.One of you clocks in, clocks out, and has not asked a question since.By noon you will explain the world to someone carrying it.

You say Baa at me. From inside the fence you say it, your necks rubbed bald by the bell."Graze," you tell me. "Graze and be grateful."

At night the pipes talk. Every house has a throat.Everything you flushed comes back up wanting to be called by name.You flushed me too. I came up through the grate with my eyes open.

Father, what happened to you the day they handed you a chair?You sat down and suddenly required a floor.The chair is such a little kingdom. It doesn't know your name.It holds whoever sits there. You think it holds you out of love.

Father does not leave the table until one of us asks to be excused.Once we forgot. He sat there until morning.The chairs have children. They line the walls and wait.One learns a wage. One learns a scripture. One learns a set of keys.The smallest has begun telling the others where to sit.

My God loves me. This God is nowhere to be found.You dressed someone in His clothes. The sleeves hang past the hands. The hands go through my pockets.You taught Him to tap His watch and say: Earn it.You built Him a house with no back door and called the locked part heaven.

Someone said my name as if it were the whole sentence.I will not give that voice your face.I am your prisoner, yes. I count the bars. Some of them are painted on.One morning I moved my chair. The whole house came looking.

Awake again. The chairs scrape back. Someone laughs.A spoon goes ringing to the floor. They are taking attendance.I am here. They turn to look.I do not lower my eyes.I am counting you.