Heaven

At first I thought, yes, this is what women do,
lay on our backs on basement mattresses.
Most of us wake up, wind up the stairs, walk
back into daylight, bodies bruised, but living.

I stayed underground, ghost-like, quiet.
Sometimes parents came down to salvage old
Halloween costumes, mermaids, Supermans.
Sometimes I frightened them. I would have died

there, but heaven was too bright and I was pale;
I would have vanished in holy light.
Later I met other ghosts who rattled bars
between my legs, sometimes too loud to sleep.

I didn’t fear them; they gave me company.
With the humility of tear-hours, I relearned
everything: how to laugh at a man’s joke,
how to walk after dark, how to recognize

terror, like a housecat. Later came the prodding
of public health nurses with tired faces, the phone call
that I’d tested negative, that I’d been lucky.
Later came the social worker, keeping me from

my file, like a bad student, a borderline, a basement
demon (which I was). Later came the survivors
in church conference rooms, the prayers to move on,
grief spilled in Styrofoam cups on fold-out tables.

Grief is like a hole in your body, and you can’t fill it
with anything except time, one of the women said.
I thought to build a staircase from basement junk,
bad records, unflattering photographs, tins of face paint.

Yesterday I met a man who said I was familiar.
On the basement night, he’d seen me playing
a grand piano naked, mind doused in sweet liquor,
surrounded by make-shift choirs of drunk women.

So the night wasn’t wretched entirely. I’d sung.
I finished my staircase this morning and walked up
to the kitchen, clutching my secret like a weapon.
I was surprised: the light wasn’t too bright.