”There, There”

He’d left her two years ago but she could still at night put

her hand between her legs and he would be there on top of
her saying Come for me and when she couldn’t she’d
remember the little hotel in Mexico with the round white tables
and folded umbrellas and after they married his snakeskin
boots at the end of the bed with black satin sheets but still she
couldn’t come masturbating alone in the dark, so she thought
of standing naked while he held an open safety pin dragging
the tiny sharp silver point delicately over her breasts, pulling
her to the floor where later she ground broken glass into the
cracked red and white linoleum with her heel, and he would
grab her so hard sometimes she felt she’d never been truly
held before and she said Go further, take me further, and
when the final papers came she got drunk as usual and drove
to his old flat he’d moved back into and knelt on his doorstep
saying his name over and over into the mail slot, through it she
could see part of the hallway he’d led her down once and tied
her up and shaved her and she said Now I’m yours and she
was and he was holding her I love you come for me and she
came, and it was raining and down the hall of the rooming
house someone’s travel alarm was going bleep-bleep-bleep
without stopping and there was nothing to drink and no one to
say There, there while she cried.