Lois Roma Deeley

Sugar Baby Hayes Fixing

If you are the needle, I’m the spoon—
There’s no before and nothing comes after.
Here in the silence of the upper room

tie the ways and days of anyone who
separates the question from the answer—
If you are the needle, I’m the spoon

so smack the sides of jagged down to smooth—
the horse riding us, hard, is our master—
here in the silence of the upper room.

They say: you have to, you must, you will choose
to be the sun or the moon. It will go faster
if you are the needle, I’m the spoon

to pierce the heart of what they all assume—
listen, ghost children hang along the rafters.
Here in the silence of the upper room

we lost it all; there’s nothing else to lose.
Enter the stillness, taste the dark that lasts—
if you are the needle, I am the spoon
here, in the silence, of the upper room.