The Laurel Review

Say we start with the understanding

you are not real. You are in a movie

beside a window in the winter rain

and the only house for miles. Say

the woman whose car broke down is not real either,

though you fear for her, follow her because

you must, because every gaze pours through

a window in the dark. She comes. She rings.

And no, you have no telephone, no power,

but as she stands at your door, her hair ravaged

in the downpour that drugs the whole of nature,

your exhumed heart begins to pound a wall

somewhere, the way someone pounds a machine

that breaks, cursing it to make it work.

And the long loneliness of never being

here, never breathing the dead-leaf scent

of rain that makes a mist of late December

begins to dawn on the woman who sees in you

something of the wreck she left behind,

of the car and marriage gone to rust.

Someday, she says, machines will carry us

over the threshold of a house in the rain.

Whatever the nonsense or indiscretion,

you agree. Say we begin with that threshold,

and you are on the other side, opening

your heart. And the shovels in the yard

open theirs. Say we begin beside a river

where you drink. Then you turn from the water,

startled, blurred, and when the blind girl touches

the scar in your forehead, she opens a wound.

And the movie never gets better than this,

this hand in human darkness, this moment we swear

a real rain is just beginning. The mirror breaks.

A wind blows through the stillness of the screen.