Thrown into This, as This

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Thrown into This, as This

Sometimes my wife partially stirs from sleep,
mumbling like the winos outside our door. 
It happens when, in an otherwise quiet room, 
a sudden noise appears. A cough, a sneeze,
could do it; someone yelling on the TV—
even her own snores, her own bed creaks.

What does she say? Mainly just groggy noise.
On occasion things are clearer. Her breathing 
will be steady and soft, and out of nowhere
she will go “Hhmm?” Sometimes it will stop, 
as if she is listening out for some sensed force:
a dawn deer out back when I tap the window.

Sometimes she goes “What?”—her decibel
daytime, as if on her toes but just did not hear 
the words. Her faking like this makes sense. 
I am often on her about dozing during a film
(“Wake the fuck up, G!”), enough to make her
ever primed, like a nightguard, to act awake. 

Especially when she says more sensible things
like “Maaa, come on!” (and sucks her teeth), 
right away—even cutting her off for realism—
I might go something like, “No! Not doin’ it. 
Told your ass a thousand fucking times,” or
“I agree. But have some fucking empathy!” 

I nurture, you see, the notion that reality
matches her dreams. So to the mom talk
I like to speak as a mom. “Do you know 
what time it is?! The bus! You’ll miss the bus!”
Or “My daughter will not have grown black men 
in this house!—All the music and now this!”

Such fuckery, in early years, would jar her. 
She would seem confused even about who 
she was—feeling thrown into this, as this
person who just spurred someone somehow 
close to her to scream, “Of course I see them 
as my kids. Fuck this. I’m goin’ to the couch.”

*This poem first appeared in Vitamin ZZZ (2018)

Photo: Me—devious red-nosed pit bull—and my lovely girl!