He told her that
He never wanted to be a nurse
Half awake in
His forearms
Sunk deep into an impenetrable morass
Hair spilling like cut-off garbage craft
Here her swollen face radiated an adopted green,
A fecundity she never knew
From airplanes,
Only creeping blue westward shadows based against eons handiwork
A quagmire of unwet muck:
A place of katsinam
Whom she had never met inside of immortal Indian Summers
They slept slit eyed in Sierras
Her unreachable place of solace
Her decade long hushes
Hugging her
Like an anthem of
Venomous taboo
So tempted by a chlorine dipped demise
Found last underneath unheated bathtub rings
He had found her fettered, drugged and
He told her
I never wanted to be a nurse.

Pink eyed, breathless rendition:
Every inked feature expressing apology
Maybe.
He could not read
The frightened caves,
God's fingerprints
Her black eyes
Which looked directly up at him
Her lips sticky, parted
Revealing for the premiere time
A girl gap between her teeth
Losing
Her only white witness.
He realized for the first time
He wishes he was born
With red crosses on his hands
To take away the unseen,
The years of garbage filler
That no one's green hands
Could remove

He realized he had watched
A generation of children's fears unvoiced
a stabbing secrecy he helped hush
Through indifference.
So for only this time he
Will cover this kachina's eyes
If she bends tonight
In an effort to preserve
God's own fingerprint