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  • Morality Play, and: Dear Amaryllis
  • Paisley Rekdal (bio)

Morality Play

Only at the last you see, in the storefront'sdarkened glass, the friendwho forced his hand inside your student's shirt,

thin wrist scratching at the open throat, or sothe student would have said, and you'd believe her,there is no reason not to, the friend about to turn

and find you facing the shop windowthat reflects the world behind you perfectlybut keeps your own face a blur.

In the glass, the world revealsbut does not always include you: carsglide back and forth, a child screams

noiselessly by the side of its motheras your friend takes a black phone from his coat pocketto dial a number: maybe it's yours, maybe you'll be ringing

in the street now, unreachable but exposed,the sound less or more than a coincidence—Why shouldn't he turn and look,

why shouldn't he cross the streetto demand all you think you know about good behavior?Behind glass, a headless mannequin stares.

She wears a sheath of silk with sequinsstitched in hearts, a heartplate. She haseverything that could be wanted in a glass room: [End Page 74]

velvet bag, new heels, even a headlessmale companion who sits at the table beside her,offering up martinis. They could have been staged

in some vague play, where the womanbelieves he is about to propose while the manis just deciding how to leave her.

Or they could be on the verge of something worse:the woman's body twisted by the couch,plaster hand cupped at the breast

to suggest how she might have been betrayed.Someone's phone rings. You do not turn.He is still on his corner, looking

into the dark shape clutched in his palmand it is more than a matter of fear or privacynot to cross the street and say

what it is you know about yourselves, as carsslide by in their cold doubles, reflectionsso clear you can see the vending cart

has a helmet-shaped dent by the wheeland the child's right, not left, knee wears the scab:you know you could turn

your face one way and look as you do at home,turn the other and find someone completely differentslip into view. In the glass, such clarity is enough

to navigate by, proved by three teenagerswho run suddenly past, dodging traffic, laughingand breathing. You watch, and this breathing [End Page 75]

fills the street, the room, the paste glitterfrosting each martini; it balloons into the shape of a girlstaring into a shop window, the face

that slides over the face, as the mannequinputs on your own face, sits at the tablebeside her companion,

and toasts you with an empty glass.

Dear Amaryllis

Why so false and sad, why this dumbhead drooping in dusk, while all the winter applesstill cling along the branch? You

in your newest resurrection, reddress threaded to a naked stem,even the ugliest thing here knows how to mourn:

all day the possum circles the drive where its once-mate, crushed by a car, has been swept up by someonekind enough to tuck it in the trash,

the living animal wandering in disconsolate ellipses:hideous, near-human face pushed to the pavementwhere its hands stroke every pore and crack—

Some might weep, Amaryllis, could they see it, this lackof what sense cannot explain: the possumknows the absence if not its reason, by this much [End Page 76]

we are the same and I hate myselffor wanting it gone, the animal's horrible, abject displayof self, shoulders hunched up into a knot—

So much easier to press my faceinto your wax one: to breathe and admire,look and be immoveable: but who can love you,

Amaryllis, cold body swaddled in moss,buried in state all fall then shepherdedback out into the open—

What would have to dieto take you with it? It's insipidmerely to survive, to taste negationas if sucking on a...

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