after Edward Hopper’s Summer Interior (1909)
When I sit on my bed, my anxiety comes to a halt.
The four walls that masquerade the unnerving sadness
my mother holds in jewelry boxes
(The ring my father left for her dusts a corner)
do very little to keep the sun out.
The sun paints my body in her rays,
(She gives me hot displeasing attention)
and for a second I feel special enough to ask her:
"You like what you shine upon?"
(The clock on my dresser ticks)
I await her response as she shines through my window.
(She doesn't)
I keep a blue cow statue on my dresser
and turn it away when I change my clothes.
(I think it may be laughing at me with the way it holds its belly and
mouth)
My head sinks into my pillow to escape her warm caress,
(She still hasn't responded)
and I become lost in thought.
(Balthus’s Thérèse Dreaming)
I’m thirteen and my sock-clad feet
make vertical squiggles up my calves
(As I wait,)
My hair bundles at my waist,
tears of sweat fall to the dips of my collarbones.
(The sun licks at my clavicle.)
(I wait a bit longer.)
