kevin

murphy

Aces and Eights

I can't remember when it was we stopped

talking. I know I didn't think of you

this way until much later, the day

I went to collect your clothes. By then

your wife and kids had already left you,

and you, you were an empty apartment filled

with furniture torn from the Sunday Times.

When I opened the closet, your life spilled out:

shirts and ties with silver monograms,

coats of cashmere, wool, and silk,

patent leather shoes buckled with gold plate;

everything you would ever need

for the office or the cruise.

In the fifteen years you took to wind

this costly sheet, I think you knew.

When they cut your stomach out, I knew

you knew. But the glow at the meridian's lip

was better by far than its dark, pointless center.

So you steered out against the odds,

against the evidence, as the emptiness you turned

away from ate outward toward your clothes.

I gave them to the priest.

That was two days after we buried you.

It's now twelve years, and more than thirty

since Father died. We put you on top

of each other, which even now seems right.

Back then, you begged him, or God, for light

but only found night after night the latticed shadow

of your childish fists clenched in prayer.

Still, you carried it like a dark candle

cupped within your brilliant sleights of hand:

that empty palm was your truth, the cards,

as you might have said, that were dealt.

That year was the bicentennial. For no reason

everyone began a public celebration.

Soldiers, ending their long shame, once again

marched the street with flags and guns;

old ships sailed in and out of the harbor;

and you, having slipped the moorings

of your thirty-six years became a wake,

a slight tremor on the bright, reflecting water,

that, then and now, trails across my mirror.

© 1989 Kevin Murphy. Printed in Seneca Review, XIX, No 1, 1989