The 1002nd Night

The 1002nd Night any husband lying beside a long­held wife, mine stretches, ear to pillow's beached shell, the heart's dim chambers awash with waves. In the women's quarters a door shudders on the days I lay landlocked like a sailor turned weaver, a knot for each night the heavens tattered overhead while, robed as lioness, given leash to toy with prey, I told tales as much to a lizard on the window grille as to a husband holding my life in his palm. Heart a lazuli pebble, a lapis pulse under lunar skin, the lizard fed me scant regard, caught by the oil lamp's flickering tongue. Knotted in our makeshift firmament, Draco and Virgo fixedly drifting neither into conjunction nor apart— I went on, betraying nothing, faithful at least to the story's letter, and couldn't say that fear nursed grudge those small hours. A near­human cry slit the desert shadow, peahen baiting cock, then deeper voices fishtailed from hearing, the cloths men had spread to collect the dew waiting to be wrung of their jewels. I watched a dune shift grain by grain the hourglass's heavy sleep as dawn rain slipped unremarked into a tale of northern kingdoms, stealing through an everyday forest, piercing the canopy of needles to whip the cottonwoods' quivering leaves into fistfuls of foreign coins flung at a dancer walking from work through the understory. First light hardens where it strikes the cleaned bones of the only two stories, a man goes on a journey, a stranger rides into town—bones of the one told twice, once from his view, once mine. From ribbed clouds a moon tugs the far seas farther away, ivory gates flooding wide at a breath. A salt caravan sifts a fresh­swept page of sand: A husband lies beside a long­held wife, her dim heart's chambers awash with waves. ...