Delilah Silberman

Rote

It’s falsified silk she dons.
She needs
urging to wear it
and with (no exaggeration)=
a brief hallucination—
a civilized deer coming toward me
and the sound he makes, seven of him,
one at a time, one
trampling over each other—
she tops off the routine she offers
herself nightly.
Can she describe it back to herself
when she wakes?
These procedural comforts.
Sometimes pacing considerably
with hope,
she glances too far up, missing the floor
and its need to be cleaned and someone to do it
(it’s not just the floors, but the floorboards too).
She whispers so much to herself
in a mirror
what she desires
to whisper at another,
if there were another.
To wrap in a sheet and tie the ends, both.
Even covering the feet and both of them.
She sees only outwardness in it,
the light on, ignoring the source,
a daily respite under the covers
washed every other day,
very slowly.

Delilah Silberman is from Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Conjunctions, Poetry Daily, and others.