God is A Nothing

Small hands.
Pale hands.
They would've been long fingered hands.


1
You ask me why I can't sleep at night?
Why my eyes are open and searching,
Searching but not seeing what I am finding.

I say: because I feel her between us.
Like you feel muscles and liquid between your skin and bones.
I say because I feel empty,
Because completion escaped me in this bed.

Silky skin.
New skin.
It would've been tanned skin,
In the summer.

You ask me why am I always cold?
Why I pile blankets on top of me and still shiver.
Am I sick?
I am not sick.
You could never understand.
That you cannot stop a chill that comes from the ice,
Your heart pumps through your veins:

I am cold because of the memories.
Cold because I will never be warm like I was before,
Before that night in this bed.

Dark eyes,
Blue eyes.
Perfect eyes.

You ask me why I sleep with a shirt balled up under my night gown.
Does it give the illusion that I am not hollow?
That my stomach is rounded instead of flat?
That my uterus does not rest inside me stretched out but empty?
I say I wish I could cut my stomach open,
And fill it with something.
Because all I feel now is shirt against skin,
Cotton against stomach,
And it is nothing,
NOTHING
Compared to having little arms and legs and heartbeat,
Contained inside me.


2
The day the blood came.
The day she forced herself from me,
That was the day it was proved to me,
That God is a nothing