They say Sunday is the rest day:
the rest of your humanity, coming to roost
because you took that walk in the park and
it reminded you of him. The twiggy branches,
empty of leaves. Like his crooked arms, docked on
the back of the sofa, the rest of his paleness flopped
along the dented cushions. He loved to walk naked,
sometimes in the bare sun, and when I asked him why
he said: I have nothing to hide. While the neighbors looked on,
probably, because I would have. To see the rest of what I had been missing.
It wasn’t sexual, not that, no — I mean,
sometimes, yes, but not usually. Not on Sundays.
It was all the otherness, the rest of it: When all I saw
was proud paleness, skin too under-done
as though God’s directive from the start was,
“Lounge comfortably in your imperfections, dear.
The rest will sort itself out.”
