Trash-talking over a can of potatoes,
we began to pretend we were overjoyed
animals escaping from our cages. I was
tiger to your elephant, then we both
became bear, somehow, in that kitchen
that had never seen such a thing in all its
brown curtains and ecru life. It had never
seen us; we had never seen each other.
How we laughed.
How we tore each other apart.
I was wearing my banana-eating pants
with my apple-thieving shirt that day.
No one could tell me nothing: I thought
I’d be rolling in grapes forever. I had
a little hat I’d made out of a blood
orange peel—it sat on the back
of my head like a Valkyrie. I never
could tell where it all came from,
the fruit clothes and the gumption
to wear them. Maybe I was foolish,
burning myself out like so much
kirsch—how the clean, blue flames
wrap themselves in cherries jubilee.
He joyrides all over town, his head out the window,
his crisp side part suddenly askew, individual hairs
differentiating themselves in a way he never thought
possible. Who is he now, who is Gallant now, if he
does the bad thing, the big bad thing—not just
knocking over Mother’s vase or forgetting to take
the garbage out, but remembering how much he
always wanted to drive that garbage truck, the red,
rusty one that idles incongruously at the end of the
picture-perfect driveway? Goofus is nowhere to be
found—or blamed. For once, Goofus isn’t right in
the middle of it when the shit goes down. As a
matter of fact, at this moment, Goofus is busy
polishing Father’s shoes. He doesn’t even know
why. (It’s not like him, you might recall, to be
so industrious.) In a moment, he’ll let one shoe
fall, and then the other. In two moments, he’ll
be down the stairs, through the mawkish
front door, past the twee rosebushes, onto
the driveway, now strewn with other people’s
refuse. Brother! he’ll say. Brother, here I am.
I’m going to dye my hair tonight,
and that will make everything
everything.
I have faith in these small things:
the tock-tock-tock of my boots
on pavement,
the fact of myself, however I am—
and of you, however you are—
the reunion
of myself with myself when I am
alone sometimes, though not
as lonely as now.
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 