It is best to speak of one’s fears
the therapist says it is best to speak of one’s fears directly, preferably to the involved party, without metaphor
to lay down with the knife and wake up with the honey is nothing like the lion laying down with the lamb though you’d think so. wouldn’t you. I don’t believe forgiveness exists, only time and the ways in which knots unwork themselves from necklaces, sometimes with diligent and punctilious effort, sometimes letting the night work its dark thing for years without your much noticing. which is to say, no. and predictably, yes. it’s more like wounds than we’d like to admit. but who is the lion here, who the peaceable lamb? I think maybe you want to fuck up my life the way I did yours. and I don’t use the word lightly, though yes, often, I suppose, but here deliberately. because I did. and it was by that, and more, of course. it’s never the fucking that does it, though that is the central thing, the flagrancy of it, the thing thrown open, naked unmetaphorically, without much grace. and I am suspicious, now, without wanting to be, though I wasn’t that night, couldn’t with your hands, mouth, on me I couldn’t suspect a thing, and now that we have, have fucked, it’s a strong word, but with women a good one, we tend to sweeten into nothing what happens with us, so I say fuck, because it was, and lovely, to be sure, and a happening, for me at least, and now we can’t stop it or think it into nothing, much as we try, much as we sat at cattycorners at a large wooden table, good simple wine between us, talking, before this particular happening, as if nothing had happened, or rather then it was more that the old happening was so old, so belonging to some other us, it was hardly worth mentioning. or if it were, mentioned, dragged retching and coughing to the surface, what would surface? and who would raise the thing, the long corpse between us. who’d brush back its hair, stroke the nails that grow after burial, after drowning, did we hold the thing down long enough? to love its startled blue face?
to lay down with the knife and wake up with the honey is nothing like the lion laying down with the lamb though you’d think so. wouldn’t you. I don’t believe forgiveness exists, only time and the ways in which knots unwork themselves from necklaces, sometimes with diligent and punctilious effort, sometimes letting the night work its dark thing for years without your much noticing. which is to say, no. and predictably, yes. it’s more like wounds than we’d like to admit. but who is the lion here, who the peaceable lamb? I think maybe you want to fuck up my life the way I did yours. and I don’t use the word lightly, though yes, often, I suppose, but here deliberately. because I did. and it was by that, and more, of course. it’s never the fucking that does it, though that is the central thing, the flagrancy of it, the thing thrown open, naked unmetaphorically, without much grace. and I am suspicious, now, without wanting to be, though I wasn’t that night, couldn’t with your hands, mouth, on me I couldn’t suspect a thing, and now that we have, have fucked, it’s a strong word, but with women a good one, we tend to sweeten into nothing what happens with us, so I say fuck, because it was, and lovely, to be sure, and a happening, for me at least, and now we can’t stop it or think it into nothing, much as we try, much as we sat at cattycorners at a large wooden table, good simple wine between us, talking, before this particular happening, as if nothing had happened, or rather then it was more that the old happening was so old, so belonging to some other us, it was hardly worth mentioning. or if it were, mentioned, dragged retching and coughing to the surface, what would surface? and who would raise the thing, the long corpse between us. who’d brush back its hair, stroke the nails that grow after burial, after drowning, did we hold the thing down long enough? to love its startled blue face?