A BEDTIME STORY

for Corinne

Your body's crease
is now steam-dried
and vacant;
all the waterlogged memories
have wept
and gone to another home.
Sand no longer dances
under your feet,
the sea sighs,
breathes, and
retreats.
All that's left
are yellowed and bent
snapshots and
the rubbed heads
of pencils.
Your womanhood,
a spiced stream
that made rivulets
through my sheets
is neutral,
boring,
dead.

I crunch on a piece of broken glass
with a new broken tooth, jagged,
and smile a demented smile
to myself.
All the spaces that stood
as background
to your form
and shadow,
your words,
that fitted silence
so well
are silenced--

Tonight the stars
are not important;
only the spaces
the dead ones leave
are.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969