Diane Gilliam Fisher

You can’t have nothing clean. I scrubbed like a crazy woman at Isom’s clothes that first week and here they come off the line, little black stripes wherever I’d pinned them up or hung them over—coal dust settles on the clothesline, piles up like a line of snow on a tree branch. After that, I wiped down the clothesline every time, but no matter, you can’t get it all off. His coveralls is stripy with black and gray lines, ankles of his pants is ringed around, like marks left by shackles. I thought I’d die that first week when I seen him walk off to the mine, black, burnt-looking marks on his shirt over his shoulders, right where wings would of folded.

She cannot imagine it otherwise. She wakes in the morning and twists her ring, loves how every night in their bed he lies breathing warm in the dark and never shies away. He lets her talk, he lets her sing. She cannot imagine it otherwise. One night she’s surprised how gently he tries to move her arm when he thinks she’s sleeping. In the night, in their bed, she sees he lies watching the ceiling long before sunrise. Too much coffee, too many late nights working. She cannot imagine it otherwise. He quiets. The more she worries and pries the less he tells her about anything. She’s sure every night in their bed he lies wanting a room beyond reach of her eyes. He sighs—she cries so much,Over nothing. She cannot imagine it otherwise: Every night in their bed, he lies.

There was a bucket, there was a wall, there was a woman and a man. The woman carried the bucket and the man was the wall. There was no place else to go. It was a long, long time for there was much to carry and there was much to wall. There was a path ran straight from the well to the hole in the wall. There was a path ran crooked from the well to the wood. There was something in the wood bigger than the bucket. Woe to the man, woe to the wall. Woe to the bucket at the edge of the wood.

Let it finally be Friday, let me drive downtown before five, park in the one space left open in front and feed the meter the exact change it needs. Let me go into the office, sit and nod, unfold my check on the table and sign. Let the line not be dotted, let it be solid. Let it be my name. Let it be final. Let me pull into the driveway while it is still light. It’s well past five and well into October and they are just about to change the time. Saturday night on the local news they’ll remind us all to Fall Back, but I make it in under the wire. There is still light. There is still time. I am up the back porch steps, under the awning, my hand on the back door lock the realtor left on. Let me remember rightly the numbers he gave me. Let this not be the dream of the high school locker with the Master Lock whose combination you forgot or fumbled, turning too fast, going too far, everything you’d locked up irretrievable, lost. Let the lock fall open, let me leave it on the steps for the realtor to pick up. Let him pull up the flimsy stakes of the sign in the yard that says I can be bought, let him drive away. Let no Master enter through my door. Let the house be a disaster, I don’t care. Let the smoke-framed blanks where another woman’s pictures marked the wall be the story of how my edges caught fire and the ash at last let me see where I stood. Let the cracked kitchen floor make a map to teach me where not to step, how not to fall through and break my very own back. Let the broken window be a way out, the broken door a way in. Let me go to the hardware store and buy the tools to take the chain off the bedroom door, let me paint the bathroom pink without asking, walk naked and unafraid through all my rooms. Let me pick up a broom and sweep nothing under the rug. Let me sweep it all into the light. Let me do it. Let there be time. Let there be light.