Jill Bergkamp

The Number of Daylight Hours

The banyan trees stood like guardsmen
and the peacock cried out after fireworks.
We lathered in night until it scented
our skin with the predatory dark.
Our son came back home and moved heavy rocks
when sleep escaped him. He dreamt
of a hundred blown open windows and a tree
with white fruit. He dreamt he swallowed
nuts and berries like a bird, and a river broke
through the house’s side window and gushed
glittered barbules. He dreamt the chest of his body
washed onto a beach, and unlocked.
The next day he coughed up piles of tulle,
feathers, shells, and rare coins. He told us
he realized he had no means of defense
so far in the woods, and a storm was coming.
You could see hearts beating beneath
our featherless skin. We filled the heavy-bottomed
kettle to boil starfruit for protection. We bought a gun rack.
Collected aluminum foil, baking soda and varnish
for our silver. We realized the house was full
of ghosts, their movements traceable
in the walls’ sporadic holes, the unfinished bar,
the copper mugs of suet. No oracle slipped
down through the trees, so we knocked the doors
off their hinges, gathered straw stems and reeds,
bent them into loops, and wedged them inside.
We tucked in leaves, bark, rabbit fur and snake
skin, until the house itself became a nest,
and we were left motherless, motherless and hungry.