how he sleeps

Or how he sleeps, head on hand, ankles crossed, the free hand raised like a mime and searching slowly through his sleep, finger poised in air before him. A few days ago a deerfly lit on the outstretched finger when I wasn’t looking, and not an hour later one sank stinging into me and I knew how I had been remiss.

Then how he turns on his side, hands praying before his face. I count the seconds between each easy breath, see the fine lace of peeling skin on his chest where I let him out too long in the first days’ sun.

I bend over close to him, where he lies like innocent Isaac on the picnic table before me, propped on an altar of pillows above Pleasant Lake, and see in detail the incredibly fine network of his skin in the leafy light and shadows of this Matins.

Each day, despite my closest care, small scrapes and minute cuts dot new sections of his flesh as his body becomes used to its mortality. They heal almost instantaneously, unnoticed by me, and leave behind pale and tiny, smooth scars, oyster smooth in the network of his skin.

Soon, I think, he will rise and walk, soon he will be erect.