Black Valentine

I don't know how my mother got my father

on their bed, or how
she stood over him and cast the fishing
line of her voice in the dark
and hooked him with the barb
of her question, or how
he managed to swim up
out of the bourbon lake in his blood
and slur something like language
from his mouth of stones,
or how that small quiet woman
got the courage to raise her arm
and wade into the rot
and sink knee-deep in the ooze
and hit my father hard-
sternum, cheek bone, an eye
for an eye, I can't say
for sure, all I remember
is pressing my face to the cool
wall, as if to squeeze through,head
first, and stand, a five-year-old
child between them and say
stop. But I couldn't do anything, so I pulled the lake
blue covers over my face
and closed my eyes and saw my first grade teacher cutting paper
hearts, and how
I took them home and taped them
To my parents walls, knowing
Mother would hold her tears
when Father didn't come home
and after t.v. I'd curl inside
the lukewarm hollow of my bed sheets
until I'd wake hearing my mother's
voice tearing the air to pieces,
my father stumbling into the bathroom
to throw his body over the toilet
and I smell the sharp pungency
of his drowning, Mother
dives into save him, quiet
lapping of her voice against
the wooden boat of my bed,
my baby my baby,
that rocking takes me under in sleep.