Each night before sleep, while in
their bedtime clothes, he takes her
eyebrow brush with the tiny comb
on one side and he parts her
hair, rubbing the dark blue
plastic teeth over the crown of her
bowed head. First, he uncovers
the bald spot, tells her it’s not
so bad, so big, and then
he tries- how he tries-
to hide it with the long strands,
and always in the gentlest of voices he says
Now, no one can notice. For years
this is the only way they’ve come together,
at midnight, with the one stooped lamp on-
or sometimes a flashlight-so he can see more
clearly and describe for her the stubs
(Thick or thin? she whispers) that are pushing through
her center. She loves the pull and scratch
he creates on her tender excited
skin. It eases her mind, erases
thought. Though these ecstasies are not
what he imagined some twenty years ago,
with her tongue deep in his mouth-
his in hers-in each other everywhere, in
the car, on the couch, even in bed.
They made love according to the manual,
moved in ways understandable,
unlike now, their shadows
on the shade-two bent bodies
barely touching, strangely loving.
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