In the dark room he asks me 

to change where we have to

bow below the ceiling, coughing

while he draws the sheet hung

to save my modesty, though

I have none to save. I peel off

my wet dress for pants thin

as the pillowcases I slept on

as a girl in Georgia, the purple

tie-dye ballooning my pelvis,

and I knot the remaining cloth

at my navel, fold the sheathing

I arrived inside, seams filled

with smoke, city, into a sharp

black square at the corner

of the single mattress. I can see

his body moving quickly, quietly

lighting candles behind the cot

-ton: divided, we both know not

to speak. This is the last trip

I’ll take with the one I still call

my husband, this man and this

room now a bought hour 

of silence from the silence of

my body walking behind another

in Bangkok, and I pleat myself

into the center of the bed, my

calves under my thighs, palms

sweating the lap, the way Asian

women know to wait. He senses

my pinned posture and pulls

the twin sheet back, and for

the first time I see him beyond

instruction, or introduction, how

the small hoods of his eyes drip

into his smooth high cheeks,

his tendonous neck and clavicles

rooting to a person more furtive 

than my own. He asks me where

I hurt, everywhere. But more

at my neck and lower back,

because I won’t ask this stranger 

to cup the cone of my caged 

heart. The springs depress

where he has sunk in to hold 

me, his chest at the hump

of my spine, my hands in 

his, our fingers entrenched.

He says of our shared, colored

skin same, same, and I say sawat

dee ka because I do not know

how to use the language past

gratitude—my accent broken,

tiger balm spiriting his pores,

and his breath at my neck, the two

candles hunkering blue light

in the corner, and somewhere

below, banned from this dark

room and in the laboring street

is the one who’s forgotten

to touch me, a man framing

in telephoto the smoky arms

of women frying chicken over gel

gas, and the foreheads of girls

hacking durian, their temples

shining, bent to the million

spines at each green shell, their

steel knives unstringing such

soft yellow fruit. Still to come

is a grief so large it will shape into

an estranged and swollen face

cursing me at the next party, our

future folding into our past, wine

staining our hands, our lips.

The sun drops, conspires

to further the darkness of this

blued room, where candles are 

shivering in secret. The fan 

whirs. The man embracing me 

squeezes our four hands, and I 

understand the gesture to trust 

him. He swings me, cracks my back.