Wouldn't You?

Wouldn’t You?

If someone threw a twenty-oz straight
Claw hammer toward you in anger,
Wouldn’t you flinch?

Even if you were on a step-ladder
Holding up a rough-lumber 4X8
With splinters in your hands and
Your arms shaking with the weight..

And six months pregnant besides
So your balance isn’t great though
He says you are clumsy anyway
And not co-coordinated at all.

And when you fall off the ladder
And the rafter lands on your back
And he doesn’t move to help you
Wouldn’t you feel bad?

But if your two cousins were visiting,
And stood there looking quiet and big-eyed…
Wouldn’t you not cry,
And wouldn’t you get up
And say “time for a break” and fix cocoa

And crackers and bounce your two-year-old
On your knee while the blood trickles down
Your back and cools sticky against your shirt
And your husband stomps out, angry
That the work is interrupted?

Years after and after when his callused fingers
Slide down the curve of your back
To the hollow where the tiny knotted
Scar sits on your spine, and he asks,

”What’s that?” you are silent
And move so that he forgets the question
Though he’s asked before and you never said,
And you remember when his hands were supple
And he would’ve waited for your answer…

Later, in the dark, alone beside him,
You’d let all those warm tears, slip out silent,

Wouldn’t you?