‘A Brief Attachment’ by Cate Marvin
I regard your affection, find your teeth have
left me a bruise necklace. The lipstick marks
leech a trail, ear to ear, facsimile your smile.
Your 40 ounces of malt beverage, your shrink
hate, your eyes dialing 911. The hearts you
draw with ballpoint on my cigarette packs
when I’ve left the room, penned in your girl’s
cursive, look demented, misshapen approximations
of what I refuse to hand over. It’s a nice touch,
though: a little love to accompany the cancer.
My thought follows you to where you spend
your days lying in bed, smoking and reading
the Beats. The accumulation of clothes and ashes
circles you, rises like a moat after rainfall.
You are a study in detachment – the trigger eye
is your eye, still as a finger poised to press should
one refuse to cooperate, and I wonder why you
hate men so much when it seems you think like
one. Think of what I could be doing outside if
I could unlock the door of myself: think bikini,
think soda fountain, think tradition, a day lacking
entirely your brand of ambivalence. If you were
a number, I’d subtract you; if you were a sentence,
I’d rewrite you. Are you the one who left these
wilted flowers, are you the one whose PIN spells
out H-O-L-E? Why are you wearing my clothes?
If you are weather, then I’m a town, closing down
at word of your coming: you’re a glacier on fast
forward, you’re direct as a detour, when I say
good-bye you move in next door. You say you
want to have my baby, you want to buy me a car,
and you’re too young to enter a bar. I should tether
you to a tree in the dark park, allow the moon to stroke
your white neck. I should give you a diamond collar,
walk you around the block, and show you off.
