Two A.M.

I lie folded as if for burial,
your sleeping, stuttering gutturals
wheezing like an engine
that won’t turn over.
Some large nocturnal animal
is chuck-chucking on the porch,
and a skitter sloops the roof
like squirrels or first rain.
I listen to the tinker of dark,
the creak I hear as wind
and not wind, think of women
bloodied in their beds,
nipples sliced, the head
on a shelf, there may be tapes,
the authorities won’t say,
they say this beats all.
Whenever I dream this, this is
true, whenever I think this,
this is happening.
To hear the lock life would
be what I always expected.
I long for rain,
I long for my child to cry out,
but he goes on as only
he can with the steady
small bellows of his belly,
his sleep soured head
in the crook of his arm.