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January 23, 2015
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1440 x 1440 px
Random Text
Hadley RemembersAll things truly wicked start from an innocence.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
I knew what they were doing. In the dark
on the landing below. Through the closed door,
the noises they made. Ernest behaved
like a pig when he got excited. The muscles
took over and Ernest gone away and just his pelvis
butting at me and his breathing gone ragged
and those sounds coming out of him. Before,
when it felt smooth and lovely, he didn’t want me
to kiss back and once he got going it was too
late and the other times I didn’t know what
to think—he wanted me to do things and don’t
tell me I’m a prude. I could’ve done what he whispered.
But daylight was coming. His bluster blocked
me at every move. Can you say to the mirror
what you want when dark comes? His eyes
would not look there. He’d draw the shades
some afternoons and put my book aside, he’d put
his breath against my ear—little boy
who has spied on the grown-ups and now
he’s alone with a girl and the room is thick
with shadow and he wants to do things
with her but he’s got it turned around—he wants
to be the one on the bottom and why not.
Otherwise Ernest never let him out.
The little boy, I mean. When he couldn’t get me
to do what he whispered, he looked around
and there was Pauline. She’d bobbed her hair.
Her eyes said dare me—I saw the hope they fired
in him. If she could play the boy tossing drinks back
with the lot of us, she’d play the man with him
when the lights went out. His eyes glittered
like shock. I wonder if he let himself
remember that time on the landing
with her hissing what she’d do
to him. Or what might have happened
if I’d opened the door and let the light shine
down onto their coupling. I don’t suppose
it matters. I could hear what they were doing.
I could hear ruin in the sounds they were making.
Borderlands 33, Fall/Winter 2009