I met you in the foyer holding a dish. Your torn screen door propped open with anguish, you took me for a ******; I didn’t know the meaning of the word. You chopped right through me with ocular swords, left my mind shedding, exotic snakes and cheap down bedding; and I fell for it. You Said, melodic, “Hi, I’m Trish,” then forfeit your tell, which I’d come to know so well, pursed lips, a squint in your left eye and then a terrible, shaking sigh. That wasn’t your name, though I never asked why, of all the lies, that’s the one you chose to try.
You heaved the child off your back and stood there eyes wild still; pressed your lips against the window sill and caught the breeze in between your cheeks, while I was checking out the pair underneath, (your scrawny physique) those sweaty lumbar rungs, like Jacob’s ladder sprung from some mystic place. Your skin clung tight to your face as if afraid to stray, even half an inch my way. “Well, maybe another time,” was really all I could muster to say. Though you begged me to stay, it was this or the alleyway. I complied, without even questioning why. Then you led me in, on through to your pig sty, without so much as a grin. You put the little one to bed. He’d sleep sound you said, as my chest began to pound. Then your hands on my belt, and all the guilt felt began to slide, adrift on some illusory tide, dealt with by and by, by some other far off “I.”