The transformation. It had been afternoon as long as I could bear. I folded the newspaper and laid it on the floor. All the stories were on government appointments-- Bad news, not surprising. The accompanying photos' Grainy smudge smeared suits and hands and faces. I believed I knew every one of them. You grow up with the fact of men, on the TV, on the radio, And they seem to belong there, everywhere, like carvings No one considers art. You can wrest them out Of your life if you must, but if you had to take them Back, you'd get used to it fast. They're an old habit. If that tree in the front yard were bigger, something About the trunk might remind you. If you spent Enough time in that chair on the porch you might know How they feel. I do. That unspeakable ache In the back and loin, from hardly moving and wanting To run, or fly. Or flee. Birds, for instance, are arrogant. They know what they can do. I hadn't bothered to read The gardening column in the paper I'd set aside. It's easy to think you know enough already. But it wasn't going to stop me from looking out the window To late January and the leaves I didn't rake And hose I didn't coil on the hook And fluffed-out wren shrilling bill-wide answering My canary. He lives in a cage on my dresser. Every night I cover it with a folded sheet, And he tucks his head into his feathers to sleep. That afternoon, today, I mean, he was singing. And I laid the newspaper down. I had to get up And stretch my legs. I needed to get out of the house. I'd been reading about the nation's officials, Thinking I understood, yet it had nothing To do with me. I'd gone a long way away From everything, at least that's what it looked like, Nobody with me. First I was a fatherless baby. Then I was a little girl who didn't like to play with children. Then I rode horses. Then overnight, everywhere, forever, There were men. My stepfather and three stepbrothers, Boys I did drugs with, boys I slept with. Men, truck drivers, Factory workers, teachers, writers, religious cultists. A student. Then nothing, not a knock or a touch. I was safe But it took time to know it. It would take more to learn Not to speak modestly, in euphemisms, talk to titillate Eunuchs in some country I never heard of before, Now racked by controversy. That was my life All those man-years, man-hours, hard labor wishing I could rest, stop somewhere, not se muscular backs Twisting out of T-shirts in darkened rooms, The same one forever, since men were forever. That stolid fish-jawed man driving through the intersection Just after the light's turned red is forever affixed, Somebody's craving for some reason, or the thick-waisted Boys hanging out around the up-hooded pickup on blocks. They're somebody's life besides their own. I had a life And figured out to live like I wouldn't've Believed but I watched it happen like a slow-motion sequence In a movie without a plot. I needed to get Out of the house. I'd been reading the newspaper, same classifieds, Same boring sports scores correcting same victories. I got to my feet. No sweat. I passed across the polished Hardwoods like something heavy trying to be light. Nothing sank in. The way I experience gratitude Is to open my arms and walk through walls, and today When I tried it I stepped out of a mob, a sorely mocked Past of seashells and pasta shells and shells and heel marks On tile, and I don't know how all the men Who'd harmed me happened to be gathered on the other side In a room hung with plaid and brocade, Solicitous and repelled as if it were our last week to live And we were vomiting blood. But they were, formal As ever, always the reason I'd driven them to destruction. I needed a good laugh. So there I was, walking Through walls, picking my way past a tapestry of skulls, Moving faster as a stretch of dusty pavement Opened up ahead, closing my ears to the circular song Of my own breath and fast-drawn hope and nobody Blocking me by accident and no terrified Certainty I could only get so far, so slow. There was no longing: only reproach. I got up off of the sofa that afternoon and walked Through everything in my way. Just to be blunt about it. I was that afternoon. I wouldn't live in a house I couldn't get out of just that easy, and proud, too, Like some poor sucker who's lost money night after night At the poker table winning a hand or some jackass kid Scoring a point in an argument with his mom. I laid the newspaper on the floor and walked out And dreamed and told everything I could Before I had to start making it up, and that was the end Of the sense I could make anyone understand.
Lisa Lewis's two books are The Unbeliever (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) and Silent Treatment (penguin, 1998).
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