Cummings Improv Part II (Edit)

Eff, this is long. Still haven't titled it yet.

Outside, pink blobs sagging on trees

spew yellow film on my windows.
It's that time again.

Time to pick my way through packed
boxes and dusty sacks from winter;
shuffling on hands and knees
through the creaking attic's back,
I find our old hamster cage.

How many times did we press cheeks
together to peer through its metallic slats,
watching the hamster throw his head
into the wood chips?
Sweeping musty scraps of pine upward,
pricking his clawed fingers into cedar slices.
Voyeurs, we'd cuddle close and scope
the bulging bead of his eye gem
like the spotlight of a boutique window.

We’d sit and marvel at his plump insides

until his lids curtained down to wrap
itself off in preparation of the dive.

Reminds me of sex.

How, so much like a hamster, you
dipped yourself until your skin
burned and chafed like a swollen arial.
You holed up.
Perhaps seeking the familiar.
Perhaps hoping to hide angsty bruises
(How daddy left you. How mommy
hates you. How I am
the closest you'll ever be
to pure abandonment--
of sense, of fear, of self).

Whether that means leaving the man
you never wanted to know behind
or to acknowledge the word "union"
for what it really is. Becoming one.
Giving up you for me
and piecing together like
key and lock. Woman and man.
Hamster and wood.

Slipping with rodent quickness, slamming
inside the fragmented trees,
hoping arms will reach out and stroke
the shudder of your hamster soul to calming.

Sometimes, tired of watching our pet
burrow into the wood I reached
into the cage, scooped him out,
held him in my hands and pressed
the anxious wiggle of his nose to mine.
With silent relief I'd watch
my gentle presence drain him, limp him
against my thumb. For me, his ceaseless
digging meant restlessness. Unease.

But for you, stopping the hamster
(stopping you), meant having to face
the unmoving evidence
of your shame.