He’s the original Adam, cable-knit sweater pulled down

over his missing rib. He’s thinking about ending things

with Eve—not because he doesn’t love her, I mean God,

look at their history—but because he can’t remember

what it was like before he had this slack fleshy gap

in his bones, a tender fontanelle that seems to invite

every sharp counter corner and heedless bicycle handlebar

and other glancing jabs, like the absence of notches

on his bedpost and numbers in the little black book

with page after page of inkless lines. It prompts him

to prod the hollow lamella over his cartilaginous cage,

to wonder if this perpetual stitch will ever ossify

and heal the horrible discomfort of knowing

there is only one woman who was made for him.

The ryokan owner brings our breakfast: morning kocha tea, loose, strong and floating in our own pot, rice bread two inches thick, our own orange toaster. My mother and I pick tea shavings from our tongues,

grasping at this needed taste,

nostalgia in silence, studying the Zen gardens in the courtyard, the sunlight,

the shadow-bodies on the balconies.

Then suddenly, the sound of her voice. “Don’t dump out the leaves,” she says.

“We can read them.”

A double clink as the liquid pours out, spreads over the saucer, squeaks drawn out with each turn, and then, brought to light.

(But where were these revelations before?) I’m straining to see stars, letters, anything in these brown constellations,

this new reversed sky of dark on light.

She peers into my teacup, her telescope, finding patterns. I study her bent head, redrawing maps in this moment, wondering at these opened routes,

this flush of enlightenment.

She is frightened. Surely,
something has happened. She has just come from somewhere
where something
has happened. Hands at her face,
holding her spinning head.

She is flushed,
pinch-browed, squinting hard out onto the water. She is
not alone: there are men

mere inches from her mouth, simultaneously shushing
and asking what has happened, shush, what has happened,

an arm around her waist, shhh, they don’t want answers,

they want an arm
around her waist, their beards by her hot mouth, and
yes, she is stammering,
but shhh, she
will not be for long,
this will blow over,
nothing has happened,
shhh, shhh, Jeanne, shhh—

One hundred thirty-five years later it
has not blown over,

the men are shushing still,
Jeanne, she is still frightened, something has happened, but
the museum guide will say the men “seem to be flirting”;

the museum guide
will not say
what Jeanne is doing,
or where she was before, or even that

something has happened

and when I, pinch-browed,
standing before the painting, spot her for the first time, I say
something has happened,
she is upset, and the man
mere inches from my mouth
turns from my pointing
and says,
Look at that adorable dog 

After the doctor
went over the scan
of her bulbous
right kidney,
I carried Mom home
on a jonquil-hemmed road.

I offered her water and dealt out
seed packets
like Tarot cards.

She selected arugula sugar snap peas
and white icicle radishes.

We decided to sow them on Saturday.

We’ll save spinach
and bok choy for August, I heard myself say.

She pursed her pale lips and attempted a smile.

And we both played along and made garden plans.

Tell me the one where he tears
you open like curtains, where
there is never a window & he still climbs inside.
How he writes letters on your walls
with the soft scratching of fingers,
reeds riding a wind that doesn’t know how to stop.
You hear voices this way: scrape, scrape. Brock. Brock. Say

it a third time & the name will disappear,
a diamond in a heist, the alarm bell
still ringing, calling. Tell me about the harvest moonlight

gone missing in the pointed shadows
of bare branches. Someone will pick you from the night,

honey, someone will show you how to love in reverse.

Behind a dumpster, someone
will unlock your secrets. Face¬down.
Dear shadow. Dear sleep that lasts too long.
Look: your first string bikini,
your first dip in the ocean of skin & sweat
& consent. Rubbing against a beach
no one bothered naming, vague in the foggy mornings.

Look, maybe you don’t remember yourself
when the nation gets on top to get a good feel.
So tell me the one where you’re laying
with him & from your apartment
you see the stars embedding in the city like anchors
& traffic is opaque, stalled on the streets
while loud & gliding inside your body:
dear minutes, dear minutes.
Tell me how the ceiling fan still breathes.
Tell me how you get the guts to open your eyes
& he’s gone, you’re floating, the bed is floating, emptiness

has buoyancy & you have a name
for this feeling by now, devoted an entire sentence to it,

which always escapes with some precious thing— tell me how a sentence can run for a lifetime

She never turns off the coffee pot. Black and boiling, an empty glass bomb slowly warming to a pending fire. When I turn it off she shivers, says it’s too cold for her to consider, then blames me when she burns her tongue. Next time I’ll let it sit, sip my mug from outside. Watch our house burn down.