Bone, Poem, Filipino Poets, Ricardo M. de Ungria, UP, Creative Writing, Washington University
BONE
Ricardo M. de Ungria
M.F.A., Creative Writing, Washington University, 1990.
Somewhere again in the room the hand moved,
scraping away like a rat trapped in a box,
the dry, skeletal lovelessness of it
a point of alarming clarity in the dark.
It was back.
A fortnight ago it crept
under my pillow and woke me. It felt
exactly, even now, like the bones of a hand
tinkering on the mattress as on a piano,
or groping for some key or cash I’ve stashed
for the night. I could not tell which hand it was,
right or left, or whose. When I looked up
it almost came as no surprise to find
nobody there. The sound it made was shut in
on itself, unliving yet empty of evil,
heard only between my ears. It stopped.
And after I’ve thrashed and turned my pillow
over and I lay on my side, it came back.
I felt the edge of the bed behind me
sink, dented by a moving weight that made
its way under my hip. Soon I was swathed
in a thick, soft, and nearly moist material
of air. It tightened gently around me.
Perplexed and tense I surrendered calmly
to its substanceless circumference.
Instead of a threat, I felt tenderness
and the sadness of someone already relieved
of the body’s gravities but not
of its sentiments – so I imagined. When I heard it again last night on the bed
I gave a start. I turned and nearly sat up.
I stared at the spot where I sensed it last
and felt foolish with my readiness to chide.
There was nothing there, no mist nor pallor
adrift, nor soaked compound of floral wreaths
and snuffed-out candles that attend the usual
ghostings. Yet the room was holding its breath.
I crossed myself and began to pray, loud
to better remember the old prayers.
I felt it hover nearby, unpacked and sapless,
holding off it’s uncommon arms from me
and suffusing the air with anxieties
not mine. And when I sounded finished, it moved
in. With the cold point of some unerring
finger, it traced my torso from the nape
down the small of my back to the buttock,
then from the hip up to the armpit and back.
And my body, shaken free of the mind, gave in.
There I was in the middle of the night,
Stunned beyond laughter and fear, writhing
On my bed in a one-sided tango.
