And suddenly she is a hare, eyes bursting
with fear. Her husband snaps her neck. Fingers
smell of tea towels and dust. Their son gobbles
at her nipples, his father’s eyes unfocused.
She dreads the key in the lock. Sometimes,
she wakes to find him thrusting at her crotch.
She is a hare, paralysed on a cold,
edgeless ground…Even through windows stuck fast
with paint, dust whispers, gathering on lips.
If, like a surgeon, she were to cut him,
she would lay bare a pebble, smooth as glass,
nudging his heart. It is his ambition
sometimes to be a stone.
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By David Selzer