Running like a Woman with Her Hair on Fire

At the Yellow Cafe

52 At the yeLLoW CAFe Everything that had a right to was blooming. My wildflower garden was a copy of your own, looked like a magazine photo.You said we should meet so I chose a new skirt and wore my hair down.We had coffees at theYellow Café and through the bitter steam, I could smell death all over you like too much after shave lotion. I wanted you to myself, didn’t know you would bring a stranger, her long name all she needed to take you from me. (“Howdy do. I’m Myasthenia Gravis. Happy to make your acquaintance.”) Bitch. She owned you, stared out at me through your eyes to tell me so, her purity of purpose wrapped soft around you like a down quilt. You spoiled your women, baptized yourself in them, out of touch with me for months, born again lost in eyes and breasts and legsbackpacking in the wilderness, it was like that. Sometimes you came back from such trips, held me, said we ought to settle in together after all.At theYellow Café, “Myasthenia” rolled ‘round your mouth 53 like a country singer’s name. I didn’t feel sad until the sun coming in the window got caught in your beard and stayed there. In the parking lot, I kissed you on the mouth, putting tongue in it, putting an invitation in it, putting all we knew together into your mouth from mine. I said “Call me,” and left. Months later, when someone phoned and said you were dead, I remembered the poem about graves running “all the way to the sea”* and I moved around inside my house like a phantom ship on a phantom ocean, blessing what I will never comprehend. *from“To Lorca”by Lawrence Raab ...