THE BOX

by Kathleen Hellen

Once I dreamed you and (poof!) we were in that bar in Benwood, where
we sat at a glass-ringed table, while railroad men in ball caps talked the
talk, the good fight, good people misled by tricksters with appealing
lifestyles. The Deer Hunter, you said, remember? The movie where he shoots
his brains out playing Russian Roulette. The rip-off. What you get when you
come back after fighting somewhere else and the place you knew is dead. The
Union. The Party. The cutthroat OMB. (remember the sex?). I think we both
got what we wanted. Perhaps we should have married, but I left. Not a
sonnet like Rossetti’s “on the Wing” but this box, inside of which a
telescope is trained on waves, a firehose of photons from the brightest
stars, finding you through icy galaxies of marriage, divorce, marriage. You
and me like that cat. Neither dead nor alive til you call me.