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A Little Ode for X.
Sometimes I call X nostalgia.

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My mother telephones her fear
of snow caving the roof in.

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She hired a man who rakes it off
every time but today he's sick.

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And so my mother
paces room after room

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watching the ceiling.

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When she hangs up,
I imagine her face

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resembling the crisp fly wing
stuck on the storm window

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or her raisins heated in
pans until they dry out,

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although their
bitterness ruins cakes.

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Last night a child threw a stone
hard against my front door.

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That's X, too, for I've no
farther to chase him away.

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Now I find the stone on the
step, milk crystal so strange.

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I wash my hands over
and over in the kitchen

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sink afraid the child soaked
it for hours in poison

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from his Christmas
chemistry set.

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X is a fifth time a
friend says no to dinner,

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preferring to polish heirloom
silverware until the garland

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handles gleam, or my brother's
letter from Florida describing

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a fight with his third wife.

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That feeling of ants in my
father's chest, red fighters

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circling his heart that night
he sat up in bed sure of death,

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that's X, the specific hum of
blood feeding against a cloth

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in my mother's leg.

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I hold a mirror behind my own
knees touching the blue tubes,

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running like routes
into my body,

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finally an equation
for X, as it, too,

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now grows by subtraction.

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