Pas de Deux
I’ve tried writing
you letters. They litter my dining table, my bedroom floor, crumpled they trail
my mind, mint stained fuchsia. Little strands of memory attach themselves,
transform the balls of pulp into stalagmites of blurred ink. I feel a tug,
skirl edgewise, buffeted into flushing the toilet or crossing the street.
Sometimes the mirror shocks away, my face rearranging itself from my face.
I’ve tried
weeping, squalling, crumpling with tears so hot they evaporate before my
cheeks. My glasses, crusty with salt, speckle my gray city with pride. The
pain, purged for days, hovers like an echo squeegeed into a sudsy waterfall,
always on the reverse: a riptide on display. My fingerprints daren’t fist a
smash or the rush of anger will prick my face with the shards.
I’ve tried
working. I’ve crafted you into jewelry, smithed ropes that strangle. There are
those draping themselves cool and gemmy into my breastplate without burning.
I’ve caught a few drawling to snare my hostility, my generosity. There are
colorings I can’t forge into expression, lines of apology where I don’t owe a
thing. Sometimes I stroke my sewing machine and think of how thin I should be
to feel you around my waist.
I’ve tried
therapy. To unstick the bad from the worse, to peel the fine strands of love
you’ve snuck into my life. To convince the steely-edged woman with shrewd picks
that you’re worth loving; I can’t bear her frowns. There must be something that
would make her smile to hear. Hollow victories, the moments she allows that
loving you is my business…the advocacy that you’ll someday return with a head
screwed on right—knowing that she means that I’ll know you for what you are
once my heart closes with a stitch in time, coarse black thread disintegrating
into protons and neutrons, swapping electrons with pulsing.
I’ve tried
everything. For years I thought that trying meant that you were having a
positive effect on me, that being your whipping girl was my salvation. After
all, I wasn’t directly lashed. You’d wield the rod and I’d put my hands on
yours to soften the blows, strengthen your awe. I believed that the snippets of
torture I shared from my chambers, pumping fear and grit, would convince you to
one day drop to your knees and apologize.
I’ve tried
everything but my fingertips. I’ve tried everything but my heart: word
processing. The secret is to take back my story but your disdain for me now
that I’m cracked raw so your fingers can paint my face with my own blood…has
vetoed my own grip on what I’m worth. Doubloons from a pirate trickle karats.
Doubloons from a rascal break through enamel into root canals.
I’ve tried nothing
like this. Writing the story that matters most: ours. Rape is nothing like a
man who turns you loose for someone else’s haunts. It’s your hands I remember
on my wrists: it’s my ghost that returns to them for lacing into rampages that
end in exorbitant bills and your credit card on the table, the kisses after
dessert that your lovers don’t get: warm pressing kindnesses heckling the
umbrage my heart is always given, always takes, for my body’s imperfections.
Your hands in mine give way to two children grimy with hunger and forbidden
liasions between one beautiful man and one average brunette.
