At first there was the treadmill
slanted across the carpet of our living
room. My mother’s proud
purchase, it was the single
most imposing furniture in the house,
with its dark gray finish gleaming
from the turtle wax she would 
apply every other day. During
weekends when she was free
from work, she would don
her only leotard, and with her
step-ins, she would perch on it
like a proper throne, and run
until the balls of her feet ached. 
Afterwards, she would gaze into the mirror 
and marvel at her trimness through
a film of labored sweat. It was only

when my father lost at poker
that the treadmill had to go – along
with the calf-skin sofa and the china.
As there was a permanently depressed
spot on the carpet from all  
the weight taken out, Mother 
had to place a plastic chair over it, and she
sat there on her free days instead, flicking
buttons and switching channels
and sometimes sleeping 
away the empty noise of a noontime 
show, the sweat inside her body
simmering her into formlessness. 
 

That night, you enveloped
yourself under a great white 
blanket we used to 
ward off the cold of the university.
You placed yourself, under streetlight,
your arms splayed out to unfurl
the translucent fabric.
Quite proud below the slant of the yellow
beams, how you cast it
upon yourself, you called me
to point out your shadow.
I looked up from where I was casting 
my own shadow on a poem
that should have told 
how happy forgetting 
was to be, but after I saw you, 
your opened arms, that play 
of brightness on you, you,
the manner, way of you, I
wrote this poem instead.

 
 

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