Three Halves of a Whole
1.

This is a story that’s etched in my blood, though I had no part in it. How could I? 

Blood
Treasure
Splendor.
Mother’s light in still woods, that radiant paradise.

On that first day the wilds rubbed their charm all over the newlyweds.

Lake trout.
Crisp corn.
The spring liberated with her behavior.
Through guzzled matter, the handle of hands eager.
They savored the bursting death.

When the sun finished its fireworks on the water’s edge they retreated indoors from their vantage on the porch. They lit kerosene lamps for light and a fire in the hearth.

Recourse was midnight.
Sleep moon drawing the words.
There did talk, a song coughed on closer
with swollen coyote.

A heavy creaking out front carried through the walls and roused their tangled bodies. 

Air wet with the turned bears doubt.
Fists spilled the rhythm, that shuffling back of black kitchen eyes,
that master Americanus. 
In lungs, a clasped breath.
Then crept Ursus.

The husband’s muscles jolted into defense of his newfound happiness. He stretched his arm for the rifle hanging just above the door.

One into fish, its shadow veins, mouths.
The weight keen, all electricity huddled. 
Treasures impossibly unjumbled, 
clasped nerves shambled beneath.

I often like to picture them there, frozen in that moment forever, the two of them giddy in the darkness just a few feet from death and yet not only fearless, but happy.
2.

There were strangers in our midst.

Removed limits, their unthinkable swelled new.
This, my cabin’s long constellations,
those bound species, all legs bearded in the day.

They were nothing like the girls my age.

Out freeze the extensive pictures.
Ivory of the idea.
Entirely still breakneck.
Enough genderless tides, festooned and reburied and touching and prudent.

Lost in such thoughts I soon found myself at the well. I crouched over the edge and listened to the deep sound of water far below, the blood of the world running hot in its veins.

Towel in my fingers, smiling around it.
Starving water. Strange bikini.
A sunset nodded.
Emerging brats.

Soon we were shaking our cups and prodding each other’s lives with young, mostly innocent questions.

One talking bottle, laughter without wobbly fathers.
Bolder torches tone me to inquiries.

My father was shirtless, the dark whorls of his chest hair matted and shining with sweat. He looked unfamiliar in the darkness, beastlike. The image of him stuck to my retinas and followed me back to the cabin. It crawled alongside me right into my cot. In my dreams I heard him roaring.

Appetite of moments. 
Busy heart of feeling painting a glued idea.
Bile into that blend.

The lake was black glass as we planted ourselves on the grainy shore. In the middle of the moon’s reflection on its surface a loon rose rippling, a male. He had a silver length of trout halfway down his throat. He craned his black feathered neck and swallowed it whole, regarding me with one stern red eye.

3. 

The sliding glass door is winged by two acacias that are well past the point of blooming, their purples dying in the hottest autumn of my life.


The scarred cheeks crack with bemoaning.
Her burden folds us home.
Her radio, her stare, kneading.
Winding path with hate inside me.

Later, after boxing up the barely touched tempura and the remnants of a spicy shrimp roll, I go down to the basement and leave the lights off. The remote is where I always leave it. The tube amp sparks to life before Stevie Nicks starts crooning out “Oh, Daddy.” 

The heels half into me again.
When wine takes its coaxing it isn’t a rendition, a cigarette whisper.
Shattered best prayer, quiet the glass.
Mirepoix of hands, cold affections.
Heloise, take them away.

As I finish my panting and my eyes unblur I realize we’ve just made something that isn’t quite love.

Don’t buck. She can’t gut that touch.
Draping choices, sunlight beneath me.
I’m closer in clatter, still a flesh doorway.
Move cold my canvas wigwams when eyes smear cheeks.
Familiar void, reupholstered fist, the ever naked.

I inhale and dig deeper, pulling up a small clump in one fist. I turn my back towards the house I no longer know and cast them over my shoulder, like salt that could scatter the devil.