What’s Grace and Mercy Anyway
It’s like
getting up from a chair thinking, (but not,
because it’s
just the way you move) you’ve got
complete
balance and some force, your own
assumption, a
memory arriving impromptu (today
it’s an aroma, salty
yeast, menstrual) and knocks
you smoothly
enough that you tip a bit closer
to the floor or
the doorjamb, and before another
small black
mark starts to rise, before that floor shifts
its mirage back
into just a flat hard surface, it sounds
crazy but you remember
(and you haven’t thought of him
in years, not
consciously) a cruel ex-boyfriend, and oh,
what’s the word
I want, while he’s in and out but not
there at all
you notice his eyes are squeezed shut
in that stupid cliché
way you point out when you catch him
late one night
with a flick you didn’t know he had
and you laugh
and scare him and close the door
and don’t go
back to sleep because even though
you laughed it
wasn’t haha funny,
it’s nerves,
its reflex breath, and a noise not unlike
a caught thing
bubbles up, and the stun and stupidity
of letting it, getting
caught…so then the long wait begins
for the ferreter
to come and pull the jaws apart
and by the time
he’s arrived the blood is lost conscious-
ness, and you
wear it like a blanket he lifts, and this,
this is where
either mercy or cruelty comes in—broken
you can’t resist,
and the trap (and whatever pushed you
in leans,
smoking, against a tree) is open by the
edge
of the bog, its
maw and teeth—if it had a tongue it would
lick you both
clean—the whole thing, past the thighs bit and pinned…
it’s mercy
telling us we’re all pushed, it’s blindness
telling us we
didn’t see it coming, but it’s the sweet
rough lick of
the predator telling us we’re all screwed
somehow, and
going down is long. Even if the floor
is an inch
away. And even if the withdrawal, if,
it happens, is
an eternity. Grace? Where’s grace? She's leaning
too, taking a
hit from the urge that pushed you. Look.
She's smiling in her new name. But you don't know
what it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment