The Other Side of the Room

All Sunday I heard it.
A sussurant whisper;
hundreds of grasshopper
wings whirring.

In my wifebeater and chains, I leaned
out my window on Flatbush Avenue
and saw nothing.
No feathered Sunday hats, no
locked bicycles dissolving into rust, no
candles and wreathes.

And the sound stopped.

I slouched to my kitchen
where the roaches twitched
on their backs.

I tucked a rag green with smears
into the handle
on the oven door while
over the stove the mirror,
ragged with fingerprints,
reflected nothing.

I sat down on my velvet
couch and it shredded to dust.
Then the stove exploded,
silently like snow
and the sun traced
figures in the sand,
everywhere.

Everywhere, sand.
The insects flew faster.
Behind me a wave of green and blue
wings nearly crashed.
I stood near the ocean,
some wide pink and blue ocean
and it was almost quiet,
with that hush between tides.

I opened my palm to read
and a flower bloomed there,
slowly, but quick,
with large white petals
which were the white petals
of my heart.