Broken Jaw Press, 1997. Occipital, Parietal, Sphenoid, Frontal, Temporal, Ethmoid Rain when it touches the face like the ends of swimming hair. I listened at my electric trypewriter and went insane. Adjusting that October night to redefine the decisive moment I put my hand under her warm, wet, five-minute head, terrified.
Memory insists the room was white, or maybe green.
The room where I smoked and passed out. Winter fire flared across the wall like a kind of intelligence. I could not understand anything as blurred as the future, the passionless efficiency with which a birthday candle would one day set fire to her hair. The way an orchid becomes part of a tree, I carried my daughter those years. The days I ran with her down the long hall and circled the fireplace in a room that smelled of fish.