[the reductionist v i e w of love]
the reductionist view of love says that if you have a heart in your hands you should eat it. he followed directions and ate it raw, and i had a strange warm sensation in my chest as i watched him swallow, a consumption that felt oddly familiar, as if i’d been through this before, as if my chest were a tree that kept dropping off hearts to be eaten in a leisurely manner. we remember ourselves through stories of desire bitten and lost. i strike a match to burn the orchard. you mix the ash with tears to make fertilizer, he says. he shows me how to do it gently, as soft as love-making on cushioned boughs. but even that will be forgotten. now i plant saplings in the empty space in the cavity, pray for a good rain.
[drowning was
s o m e -thing we could own] drowning was something we could own as children staring through the grates from the top of the light house, reaching out to touch a horizon so flat we could draw a line against it but our pencils would never reach far enough. we breathed in the tang of ocean air but wanted salt in our lungs instead, for our boots to become so water-logged that they would just slip off our feet and we could kick away into safety. as we grew older we realized just how hard it was to hold our heads under the water long enough. how bodies betray. how we were left with nothing but sand in our mouths.
R ENEE DWYER ~
50
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