Betrayal

In the summer you write me a letter

about the smell of porch wood in the sun.

In the winter

you and I

stand in the blistering cold

and sing a duet at a bus stop.

When winter comes again

you say

“I don’t like to sing with you

and I never have.”

I ask myself

could it possibly have been you

who noticed the smell of wood?

I don’t believe you exist.

I don’t believe you have ever existed.

The porch-wood you.

I tell you this.

Do you have an opinion?

The phone rings.

You’ll tell me your opinion later.

It’s later

and you have found me in my room.

I ask silently,

What is your opinion?

You offer me a pack of unwanted

yellow flowery tissues.

Is it a peace offering?

I don’t want them

but would rather take them than waste them.

You know this and

sneer at me for it.

Not a peace offering, then.

What just happened? asks my roommate.

Laughter rips through me like retching.

Violent,

unexpected,

unwelcome,

unquenchable.

It’s later still.

A spider jumps into my life like an

unmet deadline.

I leap away and stand back breathing hard, wielding a

yellow flowery tissue,

this my bayonet against my harmless opponent.

How silly;

and yet I can’t let him go,

can’t let him inhabit my bed like a

forgotten errand,

lurking at the margins

unseen but at times suddenly

urgent.

I lunge and hold my breath,

willing myself absent for the moment of death.

But even though I hold my breath and close my eyes,

I am still far too present at the moment when

a tiny spider infrastructure

fractures under my thumb.

The crunch,

like a bite,

makes me jump and shiver.

I am shuddering. But I

revel in the

fate of your

yellow flowery tissue.

How quivery it looks now,

faux forty-cent optimism

lined with something dead and

leggy.

How crystalline.