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One morning toward the end of twenty years
of marriage he awakens before she does
and watches her beside him, her back to him,
the covers pulled up tight and clutched in both hands,
her eyes tense, everything about her stiffened
even in dream against him, sealed away.
Unusual for him to wake before her.
Most mornings he's lulled from sleep in the half dark
by the low murmuring rivulet of words
the yoga teacher on the video
is speaking, and by the music that isn't music
so much as birdsong on the verge of music,
or music birdsong, or some dreamy confluence
of one into the other, and she is there
in the TV's soft light, at the foot of the bed,
in pajama bottoms and a skimpy tank top,
her lovely body that he hasn't touched
in how long now? five months maybe? longer? the body
he knows he'll never touch again right there
before him, there to be looked at without her knowing,
being moved, it seems, yes, carried, drifted from pose
to pose by the whispery currents of the teacher's
urging -- the Warrior, the Dog, the Dolphin,
and then the two he always waits for, the Cobra
that has her hips flat on the floor, arms pushing
up slowly, straightening while the back arches,
keeps arching till the breasts push out against
the tank top and the nipple show, and then
the one the Cobra mutates into, hands reaching
back behind her, holding her feet and pulling,
pulling her body up into the Bow
he almost thinks invisible hands are holding,
the expert fingers pulling the string back farther,
the unseen arrow poised, aimed, ready to fly --
Something in the undeniable failure
of who they are and have become together
allows him now, this morning, here at least,
if nowhere else, to think of what he did
or might have done to drive her off. Oh, he knows
he has his reasons for his anger, he is never
at a loss for reasons for his anger:
his sister's death, and then his brother's, and he
the youngest child, the baby, the last one you'd
expect to carry out the task, as in the old tale,
suddenly become the good brother,
the steadfast brother, there by the bedside,
right through their illness to their final breath,
the care itself the opposite of skill,
the kind of thing you do less well the more
you do it, and while he did it, needing her,
his wife, to somehow make it better, make
it all right, somebody for god's sake please
take care of the caretaker.
In the midst
of these calamities, how often would
he tell himself all bets are off? This is his time
to slam doors and belittle and still be loved,
never to have to bother with her terrors,
her needs. his time for once. Just his alone.
How could she stand it, really? What did she feel,
seeing him each day make his airtight case
against the world, proving again all through
his brother's dying what he had proved in
no uncertain terms throughout his sister's,
that there was never enough that anyone
could do for him, especially his wife?
Hadn't he proved this, so he could hate her for it?
One night not long ago, the children asleep,
they got to arguing over something, he can't
remember what, she was trying to explain
something to him, defend herself against
some accusation in his tone, which he
denied was there, and she insisted she heard,
when all at once he stood and grabbed a chair
and slammed it down and shattered it to pieces.
She was terrified, and he apologized,
then wanted to make love, it had been so long,
and she said, How can I touch you when you're like this?
And he snapped back, Well, maybe if you did
touch me I wouldn't be like this.
Sometimes
he almost thinks he's willed these losses, wooed them,
that they were sent to him as answered prayers.
No selfishness, no self-absorption, no
amount of treachery could ever sate
his appetite to be betrayed, neglected,
shunted aside, so he could feel himself
the righteously aggrieved, abandoned husband.
Wouldn't it be beyond his wildest dreams
if she were really having an affair,
as he accused her of having almost daily?
Who is it? Just tell me who it is. Is it
the yoga teacher, the chiropractor? Who?
How could she stand it except by pulling back
in self-protection and in doing so
play right into his hands and make him feel
so innocent, so noble, so deserving?
One night, a few weeks back, their anger spent,
exhausted into a rare intimacy,
an almost elegiac closeness, as if
they were remembering themselves like this,
being a couple, lovers, talking in bed,
she was telling him about this vision
she'd had while doing yoga, of this white light,
this warm miraculous white light that filled her
with inexplicable well-being. The vision
was all her own, it seemed, and no one's. Deep
within the self and yet completely separate.
A vision, she said, of being beyond the self,
even beyond life. Imperturbable,
Immovable. Eternal. Perfect and whole.
He notices how tightly his own hands now
are twisted in the sheets. He unshackles them.
As he slips from the bed, she stretches out,
relaxing now into untroubled sleep.
At the foot of the bed, he sees her yoga mat,
a darker shadow in the dark room.
And beyond the mat he sees the dormer window
where a few stars still quiver in the black sky.
Those stars will have already disappeared,
fading as the dawn sky brightens when
she herself lies down on the mat, on her stomach,
her back arching so slowly up into
the Cobra that it will look as if it's being
formed not by the pushing of her arms
but by some higher power, drawing her up.
That power will hold her in that pose a moment,
neck thrown back, her lovely neck, her face
looking straight up at the ceiling, before
it eases her back down, and with her forehead
on the floor, knees bent, hands behind her,
gripping her feet, it gently pulls her up
into the Bow.
What is it like to be held
that way, to hold yourself, so poised, so still?
As if you could be all one thing, complete,
enclosed.
Didn't someone say somewhere
that everything can be divided into
smaller and smaller pieces, that there is no
end to division, that infinity
extends down to the infinitely small
as well as up to the infinitely large?
So if you shot an arrow it would never
reach its target, since the distance could
be halved, and halved, and halved, ad infinitum?
He stands on the mat. Slowly, as if it were
a pose that she herself might do, as if
he too were being moved by something, he
turns sideways, toward the window, his gaze fixed
on a single star whose faint light makes the black
sky all around it even blacker; he raises
his arms until his right's extended straight
out toward the star, his left bent at the elbow,
two fingers pulling the string back farther and farther,
aiming into the darkness till he lets it go.
- Alan Shapiro, 'Anger'