is it really necessary? to come and go as you please? to share the fickleness of these autumn leaves? to bat your eyes and drain the blood from me? to wrap that filthy crook around my neck? are you prepared for that? to walk in front of me out of reach like every october breath? wont you reconsider? for all the possibilities and peril? for fear of what could quite possibly, probably, and preferably be the end?
yet you continue? and interrupt this perfect re-clusion? and break apart every sentence like a rotten soaked november twig? is this all truly necessary? to please yourself and go and come into days like a drunk naked december wind? to howl down my street like some great holy christmas beast come to correct me? to show me all the preferable, probable, possible, and parallel worlds? to burn all the red where the Tennessee hills once slept under blankets of green? to hold a conversation with this snow as you please to come and go like the first tiny snowflake that will begin to bury me? as you insist? as you pay me no rent, tax, or mind? dont you know? that you should take apart those frigid winter layers? that you should disregard that preoccupied, parallel, preferable, possible, and most probable gaze? why, oh my god, why must you play shy? myrma darby, wont you look here? wont you look me in the eye?
Copyright 2010
*an ode to the photograph of a girl, who lived almost a hundred years ago*