PREDATOR AND PREY

                                                             THE "THRILL" OF YOUR HUNT


The family dogs bark incessantly
to get in, or out
at the screen door
that hasn't been fixed in months.
and my husband glares across the table
with that all too familiar expression;
Expectation mixed with apathy
that tells me it is my job to fix it if I care
or my job to endure the criticism
if I don't.

This is the game we play.
a pawn in the corner of a checkerboard floor
within arms reach of an oblique king.

The teapot on the stove rises to a din
that matches the blood rushing in my ears.
and he is sitting. Right. There.

Staring at me, or through me
out into that fucking unkempt yard
that hasn't been mowed in weeks?

His lawn,
but my shame.
It's appearance so useful to him
It serves its purpose
one way or the other,
whether tended or not.

I don't know exactly what he wants,
and to be honest, never did,
but the hackles rise on the back of my neck
and the game I know so well now is afoot.

His game.

No contest between predator and prey,though.
Not a matter of whether it will be done
willingly by me or not.
Only that it is done.
Success is gained from the hunt,
not my need to survive.

He wants an answer
to a question he feels needs not be asked
and I answer him with silence
knowing full well the rage building in him
"Do what I say, not what I do"


The time spent making him wait
becoming the small inward price  I can make him pay
for the shred of dignity I still keep.
Waiting is yet another trophy 
but so much more for him than me.

This is the game we play.
This is the how he plays it.
"Sit still and let me devour you"
Hardly a game of skill.


The seconds tick by
between thought and action
a mere moment that encapsulates
a lifetime of unrealized dreams
but in it, I know I was born, and will exist,
and will die.


When did this happen?
What changed?
Did anything ever change?

What's mine is his. What's his is his.
Every success, a laurel to him alone
and for his way of thinking.
every failure, mine, because of his way of thinking.

Tension builds like the cloying smoke
that billows from the eggs he started
but that I will be putting on his plate.
As though saying
"Watch what I will make you wish for me"

The necessity of domestic duty
 rises to a fever pitch
and he knows he has won either way.
In getting his way, or showing me I am a failure.
Either way
He wins.

The pedestal to which I am accustomed
placed like a trophy to his will, shifts.
And me, a well intentioned marionette,
balanced on the handle of a broom.

My lips tighten against the canines unbarred
and invisible claws shoot from my delicatly manicured finger tips
that grip the side of the table.
A terrified wet cat, clinging
to the side of a sinking boat.

That moment is there.
Every muscle tensed to lunge at him
defiant, erupting rage at the back of my throat
it rises like black bile.

"What did I do to exist like THIS?"
But I realize I have said not a word.
His look of cold indifference tells me
I never said a word
and I swallow the mouthful
of internal cowardice.

Flee! Run! GET OUT and away!
Blood pumps into my muscles
but  my heart, already broken,
hemorrhages adrenaline
onto the floor.

Instead, as I rise, the left leg collapses
in the middle of a run.
No fight. No flight.
Already, adessicated carcass on the trail.
the thrill of the chase over before it started.

Dog in. Dog Out.
The kettle set on the back burner
like so many other things, and broken yolks
that spell the name of another man.
He smirks from the side of his face.
a single proud canine bared.

Was that amusement, or satisfaction?
I suppose it doesn't matter to me.
It didn't matter to him to show the difference.
Everything tastes like sand,
but I eat it, nonetheless.

The dishes stare back in mute awarenesslike the props in a Greek tragedy.
Funny how inanimate things
so so very much.

The danger is greatest
during mating season.
The drive to perpetuate a species
defined by three demanded actions;
Mouth shut, hand out, legs open.

His species.
Not mine.

Moments of intimacy,
once a welcomed distraction,
uses me now as fuel for more important things.
When did passion become payment?


Easter, Mother's Day, anniversaries,
events involving chocolate.
I am proud of myself for figuring it all out.
The house agrees, and so do all who are allowed to see it,
but the water runs hot enough to burn.

The front porch and steps shed its green paint
in miraculous wet sheets,
and my husband is oblivious.
How could paint un dry and run?

All the toes of his shoes
and gloves by the door
have curled into fingers of implied failure
to be atoned for with compliance.
and I am still silent.

Sometimes nothing changes.
Sometimes everything changes,
and no one cares to see it.
Sometimes nothing
changes everything.

My throat is a dry river,
my tongue a dead fish in silt
Provocation increases the toxicity of the venom
and I am too tired to run any more today.


Intentions falling to the floor
and pointless re-assertions of power made,
I rise from the table
and walk from the game.

But his name.
The man I met that changed everything,
that irregular and constant echo
that reverberates through a pan of burning eggs,
swims like a small fish that grows bigger in
the pond of my mind.

I close the door to the room
and look to the bed.
Conquest. Nothing but conquest.
Quilted subservience in repose.
Mine. Not his.

The bed posts leer downward
and stare out in an honest truth
but the bare wood floor
is a deeper, honest comfort.

I lay down to keep the floorboards against my face
to keep a yearning heart, silent
until I can open it up.
Until I can dream into a pan of eggs.

How cool it is here, how still.
The game over and spoils
left to the victor, I drift off to sleep
to the sound of my bones
being splintered for marrow.

But I dream of tell tale eggs,
and of growing fish in still ponds,
and of the comfort of uncomplicated simplicity.
The peace of cool and supportive hard honesty
like the floorboards against my heart.