The Hunt


The walls convulse,
under her thighs, his mouth, their friction.                            
Her hisses hammer the door,                                                
stretches into a crouch.                                              
Her legs quiver with the rush.                                                
She is all copper and scales,                                                  
hair black and thirsty.
It shimmers like the fury of his cheating hands,                    
it chokes him,
drops him to his knees.
Her eyes snake-bright and wild,
springs clean as arrows.
Twirl around his throat.
She plucks heart and liver first,
peels them to bits.
She rules by the ****** of her hips
leaves him empty as lust.
Her rampant thighs jolt,
force him to beg for more
of this succulent venom.
He slings his insides over his shoulder
lets them drip over himself,
he doesn't flinch at the sticky drizzle.
Her stilettos scrape his bones.
She snags the shavings,
they are her trophies
the thrill of the hunt,
proof of her savage prowess.
This medusa-violence,
breaks rooms, love, him,
drapes them down her back
like bed sheets.
She is that myth ,
husbands try their hardest to hide.  
They wash the sheets, flip the bed,
wipe the sweat off the kitchen counter,
take two showers,
and too many deep breaths.
The door snaps shut behind her.
Dad tells me,
he didn’t sleep
with that copperhead.
I nod.

The ride from Starbucks was too quiet.
We sit crossed on adjacent couches.
All six feet of him cornering into my couch.
He sweating in his black ninja shirt and jeans
because my house is always 10 degrees too hot for him.
His half-smile retreats behind your tongue.
I am too bright for him in my pink T-shirt.
The couch I lie on barely runs the length of my legs.
My hands fiddle with my blue wristband,
snap it across the room. I lock my fingers together.
The clock coughs loudly with each tick.
He was suppose to be home four hours ago.
The pillows and I lean in. This conversation
starts as a reflection. He wants to know
why people are friends with him. Why I keep
claiming him as my best friend. I admit
it is because I want him to be mine.
He saved me from the black undertow.
Threw me a fishing hook. Reeled me into his boat.
His phone rings. His mom and dad are furious
that he has ignored dinner. Slowly, he drags
himself across my carpet. He wraps his palm
around the door handle. His shoulders roll back-
this has never happened before- he say stiffly,
I've been dating another man for two months now,
I didn't tell you because I didn't want to lose your
friendship. You are the best friend I have ever had.
He slumps through my door,
face too blue and low to say good-bye.
He didn't expect me to cry.
I sit here jarred as we once were.
Trace the tears on the floor.
I can't find it in me to pelt him against my wall
like ******. There is only He is still my best friend.
The whole house shakes with me.
My lungs are jellied.

My mom helps her best friend dump her mother's ashes in Lake Michigan.
She tells my mom how quickly this came.
How young she was.
When my mom gets home,
she tells me the air whipped the burnt body
takes a drag of her cigarette,
flicks the flame off her lips,
tells me she hopes to never get so old people are relieved when she dies.

I steal my mom's Reds.
Sit on the porch and pretend to be her.
It makes it easy that I have her nose.
I imagine dumping my mothers ashes into Lake Michigan when I am her age.
In my mind,
she is not burnt young, or hoping, or 54 years old,
her ashes tumble into the dark with the rest of the mothers
who's daughters sit on porches
taking their ashes and their stains with them.

I think your hair looks better now that you've grown it out.
Let the curls that come natural breeze down your neck.
It looks like you belong in it.
Not like last year.
The way your hair, cut and lopsided,
German like the rest of you.
Spending time with people you knew weren't worth the honey soak on your hair.
I look next to me on your couch,
sideways and drunk,
notice the way our hair curls in the same directions.
How your kaleidoscope lamp lets the blonde reach out of our tips.
How the guitar on your lap leans to the middle of us.

I cut my hair two weeks ago.
I said it got in the way of performance,
but really I wanted you to see the way my hair curls natural breeze on my shoulders.

I strung Christmas lights on my bed
Because they make me happy
Because they make my dreams brighter
But some nights
We don't say goodnight
And I can taste the bitterness
On your tongue
Like rock salt and toothpaste
Those nights
I unplug the lights
Because those nights
I don't deserve them

There is a bat in my closet.
I can hear it rattle its ratted wings
whenever I think about last summer,
the dark and curling feelings.

I can still see its putrid paws hanging over me
in the bathroom that summer night I came home crying.
The alcohol spilt on my dress was streaming
the words my friend  said as he threw
the open beer can at me.
“I love you and you’re too much of a ***** to love me back.”
I don’t understand why I felt so bad.
Why the bat inside beckoned to me,
hissed at me to take the razor,  
to free it from my cyclic center.

I can still feel the first cut,  
me shattering on the bathroom sink,
the bat inside of me screeching
through my watery skin.
I still do not know how to forgive myself
for being so stupid.
I do not know how to forgive the bat in me.
Instead I hide it in my closet,
Lay in bed each night hoping
its wings wont rattle through the door.

©DelaneyMiller

Winter break my boyfriend and I Drive downtown.
He buys incense
lets me pick out my favorite smell.
Coconut.
We get in the car
he lights a stick and hands it to me.
The smoke flipping over in the air,
rounding like winged bats.

I breathe it in as he turns the car wheel.
Twist the scents
between my fingers,
watch as the air fills with
pipe cleaner smoke.
Wiggling,
Convulsing.

The next week my
Ex-boyfriend decides
he loves me again.
Pulls me over at a party,
beckons me to sit on the stairs.
He tells me he loves me
through drunk tongue
and I watch the wooden panels
begin to twist and curve,
tug at my tattered limbs
until I am sitting.
He pulls my arm towards him,
asks me to love him again,
asks me why I don’t.

I think of the incense
as he pulls me closer,
the delicate flips of smoke,
the moment only a smell can give you.
I breathe in and can taste the coconut,
he pulls me into him,
the coconut smell,
our two bodies,
his lips singing to kiss mine,
but I think of the coconut.
Breathe in,
twist my fingers,
leave.

©DelaneyMiller