Chernobyl.

I’m a little startled at how unhappy I am.
This morning she and I cannot look at one another
without there being something wrong in it,
and as always these wrongs work together, interleaven,
like dough, like folded sweaters stacked
in the darkness of a closed drawer.

John Cheever said each day began relatively sane,
then, around 8:40, picked up that first sand grain
of difficulty, and all began to fall from there,
pearl of hell, the bottle, tinkling of glass, oblivion.

She pulls me down to the couch, her soft tenderness thick
in my mouth like a combination of peanuts and butter.

We make amends: they settle about us like ash in winter,
like the King’s hounds, the palm leaves laid at Jesus’ feet—
those elements chosen to set the scene
of every other god-forsaken place I might have been.