Parenthesis
Nick Laird

I lie here like the closing bracket on the ledger of the

    mattress.

Asleep between us the children are hyphens — one hyphen, one

    underscore —

and it takes a few moments at five a.m. to get it quite straight

    that

what I thought was my name being called is the dog at my feet

    snoring.

Asleep between us, the children, our hyphens (one hyphen, one

    underscore),

know love is a paragraph lacking an ending and typeset by

    hand in italics.

What I thought was my name being called is the dog at my feet

    snoring

and it's alright to collapse like that, like a marquee gone into

    its final sigh.

No love is a paragraph lacking an ending and typeset by hand

    in italics.

It is an ellipsis of three drops of Night Nurse that leaves the 

    pillow sticky

and it's alright to collapse like that, like a marquee gone into

    its final sigh,

like my mother in the hard return of a long death and the 

    stanza break.

It is an ellipsis of three drops of Night Nurse that leaves the 

    pillow sticky.

I lie here like the closing bracket on the ledger of the

    mattress,

like my mother in the hard return of a long death and the

    stanza break,

and it takes a few moments at five a.m. to get it quite straight,

    that.