Dearly

by Margaret Atwood

  time, listening to your brain

  shrink, your diaries

  expanding as you grow older,

  growing older, of course you’ll

  die but not yet, you’ll outlive

  even my distortions of you

  and there isn’t anything

  I want to do about the fact

  that you are unhappy & sick

  you aren’t sick & unhappy

  only alive & stuck with it.

  Small tactics

  1

  These days my fingers bleed

  even before I bite them

  Can’t play it safe, can’t play

  at all any more

  Let’s go back please

  to the games, they were

  more fun and less painful

  2

  You too have your gentle

  moments, you too have

  eyelashes, each of your eyes

  is a different colour

  in the half light

  your body stutters against

  me, tentative as moths, your

  skin is nervous

  I touch

  your mouth, I don’t

  want to hurt

  you any more

  now than I have to

  3

  Waiting for news of you

  which does not come, I have to

  guess you

  You are

  in the city, climbing the stairs

  already, that is you at the door

  or you have gone, your last

  message to me left

  illegible on the mountain

  road, quick

  scribble of glass and blood

  4

  For stones, opening

  is not easy

  Staying closed is

  less pain but

  your anger finally

  is more dangerous

  To be picked up and thrown

  (you won’t stop) against

  the ground, picked up

  and thrown again and again

  5

  It’s getting bad, you weren’t

  there again

  Wire silences, you trying

  to think of something you haven’t

  said, at least to me

  Me trying to give

  the impression it isn’t

  getting bad at least

  not yet

  6

  I walk the cell, open the window,

  shut the window, the little

  motors click

  and whir, I turn on all the

  taps and switches

  I take pills, I drink water, I kneel

  O electric lights

  that shine on my suitcases and my fears

  Let me stop caring

  about anything but skinless

  wheels and smoothly

  running money

  Get me out of this trap, this

  body, let me be

  like you, closed and useful

  7

  What do you expect after this?

  Applause? Your name on stone?

  You will have nothing

  but me and in a worse way than before,

  my face packed in cotton

  in a white gift box, the features

  dissolving and re-forming so quickly

  I seem only to flicker.

  There are better ways of doing this

  It would be so good if you’d

  only stay up there

  where I put you, I could

  believe, you’d solve

  most of my religious problems

  you have to admit it’s easier

  when you’re somewhere else

  but today it’s this

  deserted mattress, music over-

  heard through the end wall, you giving me

  a hard time again for the fun

  of it or just for

  the publicity, when we leave each other

  it will be so

  we can say we did.

  yes at first you

  go down smooth as

  pills, all of me

  breathes you in and then it’s

  a kick in the head, orange

  and brutal, sharp jewels

  hit and my

  hair splinters

  the adjectives

  fall away from me, no

  threads left holding

  me, I flake apart

  layer by

  layer down

  quietly to the bone, my skull

  unfolds to an astounded flower

  regrowing the body, learning

  speech again takes

  days and longer

  each time / too much of

  this is fatal

  The accident has occurred,

  the ship has broken, the motor

  of the car has failed, we have been

  separated from the others,

  we are alone in the sand, the ocean,

  the frozen snow

  I remember what I have to do

  in order to stay alive,

  I take stock of our belongings

  most of them useless

  I know I should be digging shelters,

  killing seabirds and making

  clothes from their feathers,

  cutting the rinds from cacti, chewing

  roots for water, scraping through

  the ice for treebark, for moss

  but I rest here without power

  to save myself, tasting

  salt in my mouth, the fact that

  you won’t save me

  watching the mirage of us

  hands locked, smiling,

  as it fades into the white desert.

  I touch you, straighten the sheet, you turn over

  in the bed, tender

  sun comes through the curtains

  Which of us will survive

  which of us will survive the other

  1

  We are hard on each other

  and call it honesty,

  choosing our jagged truths

  with care and aiming them across

  the neutral table.

  The things we say are

  true; it is our crooked

  aims, our choices

  turn them criminal.

  2

  Of course your lies

  are more amusing:

  you make them new each time.

  Your truths, painful and boring

  repeat themselves over & over

  perhaps because you own

  so few of them

  3

  A truth should exist,

  it should not be used

  like this. If I love you

  is that a fact or a weapon?

  4

  Does the body lie

  moving like this, are these

  touches, hairs, wet

  soft marble my tongue runs over

  lies you are telling me?

  Your body is not a word,

  it does not lie or

  speak truth either.

  It is only

  here or not here.

  He shifts from east to west

  Because we have no history

  I construct one for you

  making use of what

  there is, parts of other people’s

  lives, paragraphs

  I invent, now and then

  an object, a watch, a picture

  you claim as yours

  (What did go on in that red

  brick building with the fire

  escape? Which river?)

  (You said you took

  the boat, you forget too much.)

  I locate you on streets, in cities

  I’ve never seen, you walk

  against a background crowded

  with lifelike detail

  which crumbles and turns grey

  when I look too closely.

  Why should
I need

  to explain you, perhaps

  this is the right place for you

  The mountains in this hard

  clear vacancy are blue tin

  edges, you appear

  without prelude midway between

  my eyes and the nearest trees,

  your colours bright, your

  outline flattened

  suspended in the air with no more

  reason for occurring

  exactly here than this billboard,

  this highway or that cloud.

  At first I was given centuries

  to wait in caves, in leather

  tents, knowing you would never come back

  Then it speeded up: only

  several years between

  the day you jangled off

  into the mountains, and the day (it was

  spring again) I rose from the embroidery

  frame at the messenger’s entrance.

  That happened twice, or was it

  more; and there was once, not so

  long ago, you failed,

  and came back in a wheelchair

  with a moustache and a sunburn

  and were insufferable.

  Time before last though, I remember

  I had a good eight months between

  running alongside the train, skirts hitched, handing

  you violets in at the window

  and opening the letter; I watched

  your snapshot fade for twenty years.

  And last time (I drove to the airport

  still dressed in my factory

  overalls, the wrench

  I had forgotten sticking out of the back

  pocket; there you were,

  zippered and helmeted, it was zero

  hour, you said Be

  Brave) it was at least three weeks before

  I got the telegram and could start regretting.

  But recently, the bad evenings

  there are only seconds

  between the warning on the radio and the

  explosion; my hands

  don’t reach you

  and on quieter nights

  you jump up from

  your chair without even touching your dinner

  and I can scarcely kiss you goodbye

  before you run out into the street and they shoot

  You refuse to own

  yourself, you permit

  others to do it for you:

  you become slowly more public,

  in a year there will be nothing left

  of you but a megaphone

  or you will descend through the roof

  with the spurious authority of a

  government official,

  blue as a policeman, grey as a used angel,

  having long forgotten the difference

  between an annunciation and a parking ticket

  or you will be slipped under

  the door, your skin furred with cancelled

  airmail stamps, your kiss no longer literature

  but fine print, a set of instructions.

  If you deny these uniforms

  and choose to repossess

  yourself, your future

  will be less dignified, more painful, death will be sooner,

  (it is no longer possible

  to be both human and alive): lying piled with

  the others, your face and body

  covered so thickly with scars

  only the eyes show through.

  We hear nothing these days

  from the ones in power

  Why talk when you are a shoulder

  or a vault

  Why talk when you are

  helmeted with numbers

  Fists have many forms;

  a fist knows what it can do

  without the nuisance of speaking:

  it grabs and smashes.

  From those inside or under

  words gush like toothpaste.

  Language, the fist

  proclaims by squeezing

  is for the weak only.

  You did it

  it was you who started the countdown

  and you conversely

  on whom the demonic number

  zero descended in the form of an egg

  bodied machine

  coming at you like a

  football or a bloated thumb

  and it was you whose skin

  fell off bubbling

  all at once when the fence

  accidentally touched you

  and you also who laughed

  when you saw it happen.

  When will you learn

  the flame and the wood/flesh

  it burns are whole and the same?

  You attempt merely power

  you accomplish merely suffering

  How long do you expect me to wait

  while you cauterize your

  senses, one

  after another

  turning yourself to an

  impervious glass tower?

  How long will you demand I love you?

  I’m through, I won’t make

  any more flowers for you

  I judge you as the trees do

  by dying

  your back is rough all

  over like a cat’s tongue / I stroke

  you lightly and you shiver

  you clench yourself, withhold

  even your flesh

  outline / pleasure is what

  you take but will not accept.

  believe me, allow

  me to touch you

  gently, it may be the last

  time / your closed eyes beat

  against my fingers

  I slip my hand down

  your neck, rest on the pulse

  you pull away

  there is something in your throat that wants

  to get out and you won’t let it.

  This is a mistake,

  these arms and legs

  that don’t work any more

  Now it’s broken

  and no space for excuses.

  The earth doesn’t comfort,

  it only covers up

  if you have the decency to stay quiet

  The sun doesn’t forgive,

  it looks and keeps going.

  Night seeps into us

  through the accidents we have

  inflicted on each other

  Next time we commit

  love, we ought to

  choose in advance what to kill.

  Beyond truth,

  tenacity: of those

  dwarf trees & mosses,

  hooked into straight rock

  believing the sun’s lies & thus

  refuting / gravity

  & of this cactus, gathering

  itself together

  against the sand, yes tough

  rind & spikes but doing

  the best it can

  They are hostile nations

  1

  In view of the fading animals

  the proliferation of sewers and fears

  the sea clogging, the air

  nearing extinction

  we should be kind, we should

  take warning, we should forgive each other

  Instead we are opposite, we

  touch as though attacking,

  the gifts we bring

  even in good faith maybe

  warp in our hands to

  implements, to manoeuvres

  2

  Put down the target of me

  you guard inside your binoculars,

  in turn I will surrender

  this aerial photograph

  (your vulnerable

  sections marked in red)

  I have found so useful

  See, we are alone in

  the dormant field, the snow

  that cannot be eaten or captured

  3

  Here there are no armies

  here ther
e is no money

  It is cold and getting colder

  We need each others’

  breathing, warmth, surviving

  is the only war

  we can afford, stay

  walking with me, there is almost

  time / if we can only

  make it as far as

  the (possibly) last summer

  Returning from the dead

  used to be something I did well

  I began asking why

  I began forgetting how

  Spring again, can I stand it

  shooting its needles into

  the earth, my head, both

  used to darkness

  Snow on brown soil and

  the squashed caterpillar

  coloured liquid lawn

  Winter collapses

  in slack folds around

  my feet / no leaves yet / loose fat

  Thick lilac buds crouch for the

  spurt but I

  hold back

  Not ready / help me

  what I want from you is

  moonlight smooth as

  wind, long hairs of water

  This year I intended children

  a space where I could raise

  foxes and strawberries, finally

  be reconciled to fur seeds & burrows

  but the entrails of dead cards

  are against me, foretell

  it will be water, the

  element that shaped

  me, that I shape by

  being in

  It is the blue

  cup, I fill it

  it is the pond again

  where the children, looking from

  the side of the boat, see their mother

  upside down, lifesize, hair streaming

  over the slashed throat

  and words fertilize each other

  in the cold and with bulging eyes

  I am sitting on the

  edge of the impartial