Double Bed

She goes upstairs early,
lies wretched in the double bed,
letting its cool space ease her.
The curtains strain a think daylight.
People move faintly beneath.

Tired out, she enters soon
those inner vastnesses
where wishes are almost naked,
pursuing new shapes
of desire, new solitudes.

She wakes fractiously
as the bed rearranges its sinews
for a heavier transport.
He brings her cold flesh
and delicate flattery:

she's not all innocence.
It's just that, by daylight,
they inhabit different angles,
no longer wave and smile
from each other's mirrors.

So, not unkindly,
he turns his back
(he can never sleep facing her)
and she will lie staring
at the dark for hours,

motionless, disarrayed
in the space he has left her.
It is too narrow to sleep in,
but impossible to leave,
she thinks, without robbing
him.

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