He looked at her sitting across the room.
Poised, gracious, so much like her mother.
She had inherited her flawless skin, her angular limbs, the tilt of her nose.
Even as he watched her with quiet pride, he couldn’t help noticing how she showed no trace of the omnipresent family disease that ravaged them all.
And the girl sat there in the back room of an empty life,
Morning, noon and deepening night,
Snipping off the thread to all that connected their Siamese pasts,
Left with loosened loops and a handful of unraveling,
She soon realized
(Head-splittingly, unwittingly,
With fingers twisted cuttingly)
The importance of ending everything
With a knot.
He sauntered past the storefront, staring at the mannequins, his eyes caressing their curves, the solid wooden cleavage, the lifelike limbs. Maybe he could stay there in their companionable world, and they would let him touch them sometimes. But then he had to drag his unwilling feet in the direction of the honking school bus.
It was one of those insidious things that slithered under one’s skin and didn’t even have the courtesy to ask for directions.
She marched around the house, attempting busyness, but it still rankled.
She knew why.
She couldn’t tell him that she resented the tone he used with his ex because it was too gentle.
And Life cackles as I try to encompass her,
catch her,
chase her,
put her down in neat rows of words,
unsuccessfully, of course,
because barely have I struggled to contain her
than she is up and off again,
her laughter in the breeze
mocking my bumbling attempts at pinning her down
to this page.
I saw them tugging at her in opposite directions, vicious, persistent, unwilling to let go.
She’s mine, one growled, no mine! hissed the other, as the battle raged and I looked on, helpless, transfixed, unable to look away.
And, as Death and Life danced their intricate tango, the lady under the respirator lay in waiting.
He left.
She left.
One last lingering look, a quick glance,
“We’ll meet in another lifetime,”
and they were gone.
Walking briskly, in opposite directions, heads lowered, hands clenched in pockets.
No more farewells. Or sweet goodbyes.
They had to time it right, you see.
They had only 46 seconds before the bus blew up.
