In the Driveway |
by Lisa Carl |
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in the driveway As my almost-ex circles me – still as prey in the driveway – as his eyes target, cheekbones knife, his rose-pink lips (his rose-pink lips!) thin,as he closes in – restive, intent – as 14 years diminish into the closing space between us, as, tensed to spring, I dial 9-1-1 and follow through for once, still blooms a memory: My long-ago defiance, spurred by surety that cummings is right, that feeling is first, that only stiffs attend the syntax of things. And perhaps still so. But an addendum, overdue: feeling, if first, need not be followed through. For love it seems – or lust, at least – drops, Falconesque – opportune, carnivorous – binding the unwary to the ruthless in a dance primal and brutal. Our mistake, we predators and prey, scavengers and scavenged, is to consecrate chemical response with ceremony and song, conspiring to dismiss a cunning in the gaze, a threatening hunch of shoulders poised to launch and wheel, until a child, rabbit-frozen, velveteen eyes wising up, pressing her cheek into the grid of screen, observes our death-throe dance; until a siren song makes it safe to admit that the light has left Love’s eyes. And death is no parenthesis. |
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