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Blue Lake Fantasy #4
- University of Arkansas Press
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Blue Lake Fantasy #4 It is not commonly understood why my love is so deadly. —Richard Jackson, “Do Not Duplicate This Key” By a blue lake in early summer, at some glad reunion of mutual friends, I’ll be sitting just off the tide line, ripe to be stumbled upon like a beautiful shell, when something old and wild calls you toward me. It will have been years since you last saw my face, twisted and stained with hatred and hundred proof tears, but now I’ll look lovely and strong, with well-toned legs tanned just the right shade leading down from the lacy hem of my dress, and just the right streams of blonde in my blunt-cut hair. You’ll squint through your glasses, shake your head, polite but expecting the worst: gin on my breath, or a loaded gun in my innocent sack of corn chips and sesame buns, one bullet engraved with your name. (I bet you still think you can boss my dreams around!) And a yellow-eyed cat curled up cool and soft in the birches above us, will be licking her paws and purring her cues; and of course I’ll pretend not to see you 19 at first, but then when I turn toward my name in the curve of your voice, in your uplifted question mark, you’ll smile and I’ll gaze, backlit by sunset gold, just past your face, my flattened palm a visor stretched brow to brow, and say Well, hello . . ! and let it trail off to mean anything, nothing at all. You won’t have to ask how I am; how else could I be, serene and tanned and toned with just the right twirls of blonde in my blunt-cut hair, blown back by just the right breeze, and gazing just past you, my flattened palm a visor, the cat curled up in the branches above our heads, purring Well, look who’s here! And then from the lake, a shape that might be a wavepoint or drifting log will bloom sudden arms and a waving hand and there like a slick wet otter will come my new darling-who-loves-me, out of the blue lake that shines and waits just over this length of fence. 20 ...