Michael’s Angel, Oh

Michael’s Angel, Oh

I’m lying in bed
levitating instead of sleeping
which is how my body refuses
to sink into these soft wisps
and cotton clouds

and I’m thinking about Jackson
& Cooper, cat & cockatiel, and how Jackson
lies on top of Cooper’s cage
and the normally chatty
and chirpy Cooper gets very quiet

and I see
water, how it’s perfectly
obedient to gravity, the way it seeks
the lowest place and goes there
always, until there’s no room for itself
so many ways to fall
without question or answer

and how yesterday
with quiet compliance
a woman bent over my feet,
buffed my nails, painted a mini
sunny-sky landscape on my toes

and how maybe,
maybe I can inhale my own perfume
in the middle of the night
and I’m Jackson&Cooper&Water

& I’m Michelangelo’s babydoll
with shiny toenails painted all wrong
but exactly right: sun below, flower on top
and a river in the sky

but I can’t stay in here much longer
listening to him chip away
at my marble sky knowing that at any moment
it could all shatter.

– poem and pastel painting by mary macgowan