The Tophouse - Zenobia Frost

[speculumannorum]

Tivoli, NY

The honey-warm A-frame where you left me

upstate and alone with the woods. That great room

built by your godparents, where your kin had piled years

of quilts. The big sleigh bed you’d never been allowed

to sleep in as a child—suddenly mine, all its duck-down,

and woollen rugs that nuzzled feet like a childhood dog.

I lay on the raw wood, tucked my body underneath

the walk-in’s rack of gowns, and splintered.       In half-green

dawn, I saw noise-and-static    deer, and squirrels pouring

from the poison ivy. The river-moat between here   and the ranch

where your mother  broke    in horses. Truth is a tender  fossil.

And everything dissolves  in enough sunlight. Your godmother

takes me out   for cigarettes:   Some men  are just gutless. I am a horse

with its leg  bent back. I  hear a gunshot: a fawn   detonates

on the  highway. That  postcard-quiet   once your hands  left  with   you.

-

Meanjin

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