DAY OF THE WEDDING
197
before you in the park suddenly scatter into the air with annoying
flapping noise that hurts the ears.
You have what they call the flat affect now. I look into your
eyes and see a heavy curtain behind the lens; the eyes that used to
smile out at me are schizophrenic. You draw the curtains back for
your friends but when you see me the two sides come together so
fast that the two approaching edges swing together overlapping and
I am in the world you ignore. You talk to me of the voices you hear,
of the man who taps your brain with wires, of high frequency rays,
plots and religious hallucinations until I want to tear inside, shake
up the contents and tell you that you are wrong, those things are
not true but you just walk away back to your ward, back to your
own world, shaking your head at me, smiling at my delusions
and hopes.
You bastard, cold damn bastard. I open the window and scream
into the night and those black waving fields, the edges of the trees,
the broken sky and the circle of colors around the moon. The cold
air and damp fill the car until I shiver. I turn on the radio, the
heat and drive very fast putting my head out the window, the wind
blowing tears into my eyes and then blowing them out along my
cheeks and temples.
When was
it
that the other girl got up from where she lay
on the warm grass, held out her hand, looked into your face and
said something nice about your tennis that your mother used to
tell me you practiced all day every day when you were a child, hit–
ting the ball against the house? What did she say and do that was
so different? Did you take her out into the marshes that night and
did she hear the sea and see the rivers of black flecked with silver
and kiss your lips sucking your life into hers? Was she sitting beside
you in your apartment when you wrote to me saying just enough so
that I came home as fast as possible? My friends came off the beach
and out to the airport with me, and stood bunched together mur–
muring hopeful words that we all knew were absurd. The man next
to me in the plane slept all the way and I dreamt, elaborating the
ways in which I could sink my fist into his fat neck and cut off
the heavy noisy breathing that rasped up down in his throat. I took
the bus in from the airport with a stomach alternately geling up and
melting in the sun but there was nothing I could do.
