Trampoline

In my father's yard is
my mother's nightmare
the trampoline he bought us
seven summers ago
when he felt light and spiteful
without his marriage burdens

behind that the bush
I back-flipped into by accident
last May when I fancied
myself a gymnast
when I longed for
my own kind of weightlessness

it's still crippled where
the branches splintered in my ribs
like broken bones
like her face inside my eyelids
her I told you sos hissed
into that space below awake

hilarious you said later
in your still-night telephone whisper
surely you pictured me
sailing cartoonish
through the air
limbs flailing in
quiet desperation
my dotted line tragectory
a perfect parabola

but where were you
to feel gravity's slow pull
to unconscious
like a shrinking rope fastened
to the ocean floor

where were you
when she rushed over to ply bleeding cherries
from my hair.....wood slivers
out of my hips and fingers
her sighs articulating their own
vocabulary of guilt

and now the adages swirl
in my head like stale reprimands
curiosity killed the cat
absence makes the heart grow fonder
mother knows best

how to untie the silence
strung long and heavy over our heads
how to ask
where are you
to feel your way in the breathless dark
read these scars like braille
call them poetry

where are you
to slip these aphorisms
the tongue