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Aids Memorial Quilt
Keeping watch, twenty years later

Night Stanzas

Christmas Eve

by David Simpson
(26/05/04)

I told him I had never come
so he said I could be there when he did. That night
I knelt beside him -- cubicle 15, bed on the left --
without touching. "I slide up and down on my stomach,"
he said with minty breath. The rhythmic rustle of sheets on his legs,
the respirations, shorter and shorter,
made him sound like a long-distance runner with miles behind him.
"Once, my father caught me
doing this.... I'm getting close."
What did he do? I wanted to know, but the rustling stopped
and he didn't speak for what seemed a long time. Did he
say anything? Did you get in trouble? "It came."
That was all he said. In my talking, I had missed the moment.
I thought, maybe, it was like Christmas Eve,
listening for sleigh bells from my bed,
but carols on the stereo downstairs were too loud,
and then I was waking to my father's footsteps -- he was always first
to go down and light the tree -- the flick of the switch
and his calling up to us: "It looks like he came:
The floor's just covered with presents, all the way out to the coffee table."

©2004 by David Simpson

                                                                                                                                                                                               

Reader Comments


David Simpson is working on his second book of poetry. His first manuscript, "Hyacinths," is in search of a publisher. His poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, River Styx, The Cortland Review, Verse Daily, La Petite Zine, and other small poetry journals.


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