on your way out, her mouth was scarred screaming words
at you, but you could not hear her say anything
“how could you??” ,might have been one of them
or maybe that was the impression of her face that you remember when she stood
in the hallway between your bedroom and her kitchen, smashing
the plate behind your ear against the wall, flung at such a speed
that it had to have missed you, and the car keys
dropped from your fingertips, you were leaving
and she suddenly professed something that at one time you might have believed
it was love, but the words were awkward
to understand in a set of sentences you had her neatly in
and you had begun leaving her when she was squirming
to reach you.
she had managed the start of it with her body
in a room taking up so much space because you hadn’t been looking
only at her in the dark, she had insisted
on the door being closed and the bed sheets on the floor, a bottle to your lips,
it had not even been your room, a motel of her choosing, her forcing
your skin as to give you permission to drive into her
to such an extent that she was convinced
but you yourself had begun to question her and her taunting,
pushing herself into the cleft of your eye, the cubbyhole of your back
until you found that you could not breathe as she held
an ear to your throat where you made, what she called, “these funny little noises,
like you were about to die..”
that could not have been anything other than her coming and going of you.
always you had to struggle with her clothes and your wanting
and the twisted way in which she had slept with her back pushed against the wall,
so far away from your hands, and you realized that she was made up
solely of gestures.
“and what of it?” ,you had said
reaching down to pick up the keys along with the cigarette in your mouth
opening the last reason you had to keep moving
stretching the length between you and the bedroom, tearing her
to stand before you, another plate in her hand
but you went to her one last time, to break her
into tears and you hugged her still, moving the words away
from her mouth, your mouth to her ear, in the hallway
whispering, over and over, “..it’s over,
it’s over..”