The Marriage Bed

Sleep, together on this great plain of color-fast sheets, or the raft
as I sometimes think of it, or the high plateau of our marriage –

sleep is when we are closest, almost grafted together, waking
as imagoes who have traveled through each other to reach this hour.

If, as I sometimes see before dropping precipitously to sleep,
this big and never-made bed were truly geological and large,

to drag my dangling arm, to live, awake or not, so near the edge
would be more daring than I really am. There be dragons

the mapmakers of our marriage would say, though in the shape
of slippers and dustballs; clean laundry consorting with the soiled,

and all the antique escarpments stained with the faces of dead others.
Not dragons ahead as for explorers, but all behind – no going back,

not even in divorce which you have held over me like a sword
already dyed with my blood when I was less than loyal.

But you and I are in the grain; our lives are one, though two-headed
and sore at the neck. From this far corner where I have crawled

to hear how your rhythmic breathing changes from a distance,
I can look out as from a border cliff to several states:

nowhere else is warm or cold enough, flat or cragged enough.
You are my raftmate in drifting or drowning; we have listed

to all angles, taken storms, and stayed. While you slept
I have traveled your terrain, and always found my way.

*

It's Yukiko's birthday tomorrow; this is her present (one of them).