There was a hole in the wall. Above the head
board set at the head of the bed, a hole,

above my pillow that basked in day light,
but upon which my skull lay at night

beneath a satin eye mask, its nose holes
occupied by air’s entrance, a drafty

sinus, noisy gusts roiling him awake
as summer thunder does, startling

the nerves of canines. When he set
to work patching it up, tracing an outline

of the hole onto a piece of paper, a shape
he used to cut the new patch, to place

the hole’s exact shape, settling it,
gently as a brain surgeon might replace

a skull’s cap, set it back, lowering it
with sterilized tweezers. Then he spackled

the rim of the break. Allowing it to dry,
he sanded it down, later repainting

the wall the same robin’s egg blue so
cleverly you would have thought it had 

never been struck. Or, more accurately,
you would have thought nothing of the wall.