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Sunglasses in the Subway
I knew, was a very bad sign.
We'd just come from the marriage
counselor and what had he said?
What ice stormed my heart?
His declaring he'd lost all empathy
for me—his wife—this doctor
of empathy?
Or was it the argument over reading—
how I wanted him
to read with me in bed and
his refusal? So that now
on the subway, he announced,
he would read. How is it
possible to use reading
as a weapon, a wounding shield?
The shutters slammed down
and there wasn't a peep-
hole of light I sat
next to a Buddha of stone
and wept into the punishing fluorescence. Put
my dark glasses on to guard
me from the blinding shame and
the gaze of others.
But it failed me then
as our son's exuberant young
teacher—oblivious to pain—sitting
across the aisle with her husband
called out my name.
I had to come up from hell
and say hello (couldn't she tell?).
How was it possible? Not the reading, per se,
but the armoring as aggression.
As in the Mission chair
in his study into which he would retreat
each evening—the book
or newspaper more pressing than
his son or wife. The shutters
of his eyes slanted down onto
the lines of any novel. Once, when
I'd confronted him about lunch
with his lover he swore
was a friend, refusing
to cancel and have lunch with me,
that evening he scolded me
(why are the worst things
always true?)
for having moved a single book in the living room
and I raged at him in front
of our stunned son.
And what did he do?
He picked up the newspaper
and read as though untouched by
the whirlwind.
As though I had become Job
and he already my dead
husband.
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