Low Tones

I stripped the sheets off the bed and traced
the creases in my knees all the way back
to the arrowed point under my chin,
pulling muscles wrapped over bone
into crest-curve spinal cord, following,
reading dunes like brail on leather,

The phone was off the hook, swinging
from the side of the bed, dial tones
percolating through Mom’s quilt, reaching
over the hill of my shoulders, with foreign
fingers over collarbone, under earlobe, down

wrinkled brow, up through brain stem to receptors
receiving blue light from the T.V., hollow ears
until waking, and I clicked the headset back
on its base before crawling back through
the bare mattress to where I was before
I knew the bed was empty.

The shadow shapes on the walls recounted
the hours somewhere between two and five
when dial tones turned to low tones of under-
water breathing, of toes peeling away

from the fitted sheet sprung back
from its elastic—tucked under the left ankle
through another loop of crooked joints.

The books were still strewn on the floor
with lost baseball cards and a wristfull
of hair ties, buried under grocery list poems
and cups full of pens and grape juice.

I folded the papers, flattened the pages
with the balls of my feet and reached up
to cut off the ceiling fan, turning to come
back, one head to two pillows before
I knew the bed was empty.