(In a male voice)

It was a Saturday afternoon at Clausen house.

I was looking for strings for my guitar.

Over the years I had bought, an antique wrench, 

a mahjongg set, and a signed photograph 

of John Lennon just before he died.

 

I was considering a set of drill bits

when she walked in wearing bicycle shorts 

and a red halter top. She walked up to me, stood close. 

“Have you seen any sterling silver — forks or spoons, 

a small kiddish cup?  I know the prayers.”

She smelled of sex, if sex were the deep

dark light of a ruby. Her eyes changed from gold to green, 

and I knew I could never trust her,

but trust, you know, is sometimes beside the point.

I was paying for my strings when I noticed

she had gone. I ran out  to the street

and saw her a block away walking her bicycle.

I ran after her and asked, 

“Would you like to get a latte?”

She said, “I know a bar.” 

She ordered a Pisco sour, 

explained it came from Peru.

While I made awkward small talk,

she sipped through her straw

and taunted me with her thighs.

I asked her name.

I was caught, drawn to the center of her web.

Why didn’t I walk away? 

Because she knew the story I needed to hear.

She told it in a low voice, eyes closed. 

“It is winter, she said. “We’re holding hands, 

almost married. We are walking along a railing 

above an ocean of ice. I take your hand, 

pulling us towards the edge, but you hold back,

a fear of death.”

“I know about death,” she said. 

Death happens when a tiny fissure in the sky, 

and a person falls in.”

I could have chosen that dark-haired girl

who lives upstairs. She would have loved me.

Instead I became a beggar, living on crumbs.

I could kill her, but what good would that do?

I would be obsessed with a dead girl 

instead of a living one.

And would it be my story or another one of hers?

So this is not about a woman in a casket

dressed in ash. It is about love and all the ways 

it can hold you and hurt you.

It is about drowning in ice.