"Moonrose" by Debra ReillyIn the style of Sharon Olds
While he told me, I looked
down, through the glass coffee table,
to the faux wood, to my nude flats and
to my nearly nude feet invisibly bound by nude stockings
like a throat constrained by a vise of air-born illness.
I replied, No, I don’t love you. I was on my
way to loving you. Later, when we
left his apartment, he slipped on the tired pair
of strapped, brand shoes
worn by my downcast gaze while we worked
at the Flavo-Fill perfumed theater that
humid, record-breaking-heat summer.
I thought—a week ago—I gripped
his hand and twisted on a movie theater seat,
watching an indy film and thinking
we would be a glorious indy story,
the film’s climax casting its anxious claws
under my breasts, my eyes trolling
the shadowy theater dusk,
finding our feet on its slab floor.
He walked me back,
tugging me easily,
my helium soul slowly
leaking through my eyes.
After he kissed me goodbye--
I hoped out of
compassion, out of
desire for my delicate self—I felt the
hurling of lung, my Irish banshee hysterics
coughed through the marbled stairs,
past the Flavo-Fill theater, to my apartment where,
free, in the dark, I ate my pillow,
stuffing in my last heaving hisses,
trapping in the hope we would play tennis again soon.
While he told me, I looked
down, through the glass coffee table,
to the faux wood, to my nude flats and
to my nearly nude feet invisibly bound by nude stockings
like a throat constrained by a vise of air-born illness.
I replied, No, I don’t love you. I was on my
way to loving you. Later, when we
left his apartment, he slipped on the tired pair
of strapped, brand shoes
worn by my downcast gaze while we worked
at the Flavo-Fill perfumed theater that
humid, record-breaking-heat summer.
I thought—a week ago—I gripped
his hand and twisted on a movie theater seat,
watching an indy film and thinking
we would be a glorious indy story,
the film’s climax casting its anxious claws
under my breasts, my eyes trolling
the shadowy theater dusk,
finding our feet on its slab floor.
He walked me back,
tugging me easily,
my helium soul slowly
leaking through my eyes.
After he kissed me goodbye--
I hoped out of
compassion, out of
desire for my delicate self—I felt the
hurling of lung, my Irish banshee hysterics
coughed through the marbled stairs,
past the Flavo-Fill theater, to my apartment where,
free, in the dark, I ate my pillow,
stuffing in my last heaving hisses,
trapping in the hope we would play tennis again soon.