To be absorbed, wholly absorbed
in something as delicate
as the rich brocaded light streaming
through the windows of the Public Library
is one way; then to sit all morning
at the circulation desk dreaming
the sandy buzz of his face roaming
your body is another.
It's 1961, and you live with a man
who has no idea what you do
with your days, other than inking
felt pads and pasting return slips
inside the covers of tattered books.
What would he think if he saw you
rubbing your belly and doodling
the different names for boys
on the back of the catalogues?
For a moment, you imagine him
on break at the airplane plant,
joking with the other lineman
and polishing his neck
with a cold bottle of coke.
Does he see you writing Alexander
or Adam with cursive flourish,
your free hand pryed inside
the waist of your too-tight skirt?
Of course not, you don't tell him
these things, or how sometimes
you have to run to the bathroom to get sick,
and how while you're hovering over
the toilet, you glimpse a bit
of graffiti about Kennedy's cock,
and can't help laughing as your throat
burns from bile, as you wonder
what it is this thing inside expects
from you after twenty years of being
pretty & utterly possible.
Nothing has prepared you for this,
now, as the warm breeze is blowing
the curtains into sails,
and the retarded girl is standing
before your desk, showing you
the bruise on her arm.
There is no bruise,
but you rub it anyway, silently
wishing she'd leave.  Her face
is sullen or sweet, kind of teetering
on the threshold of an emotion,
and when you hand her the book kept
especially for her, the book
with all the talking trees,
she drops it, and shuffles off
to the stacks, rubbing her arm.
By now, he is in the lunchroom
pulling gloves off with his mouth,
unwrapping the turkey sandwich
and drinking from his thermos,
and you're sitting on an iron bench
outside the library, with the sun
the size of the apple in your hand.
What is he thinking, when he balls up
the wax paper and steps back into
his overalls, this man who discovered
the torque of your body so easily,
that the first time he touched you,
you would have given him anything
and did.
If anything has changed between
then and now, it's only how the details
blur, as the crooked laugh
of the retarded girl drifts through
the columns of books, and you idly
pat the blossom of your belly
once more, afraid of all you don't know
about yourself or the man who wears
your small gold band of devotion.
Is he wholly absorbed in his work now,
fitting the gleaming panels and planing
the finned wings just so?
And what will he do with those
same hands later, when he holds you
in the kitchen, and you tell him
and don't tell him
about your day, about the girl
with the invisible bruise,
about this thing growing inside
that you think you have a name for.
Will he keep holding you?
Will he put his mouth to your belly?
Will he take this like he has taken
everything else?

________________________________________________________________________

ADAM HILL teaches literature at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA.  His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Seattle Review, and Poetry NorthWest, among other places.

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