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Rebecca Lu Kiernan
Gray Dog
The razor gray Thursday we got the news
Of your deployment,
The verdict came out of a hat,
Just like the movies, they pick the pilot
About to retire and cartoonishly in love.
We ate at a stained glass corner bistro
Where no one spoke.
We were the youngest people there.
The music was twenty years old.
No one looked up from their plates.
There was not a crumb of laughter.
We avoided eye contact
To prevent irreparable fissures.
I waited till you surrendered to sleep
To cry ever so silently.
You woke up running from Hannibal Lecter
With a woman who was not quite your mother
And not quite me,
His terrible yellow teeth snapping
At your favorite shirt
Of blue boats and red non-fighting airplanes.
So, I said I loved you
And fed you a chocolate chip cookie,
But what I meant to say was this,
This is to confirm my whole-hoggedness,
I'm in it for the longest of long hauls.
I waited thirty-seven years to be with you
And I would wait thirty-seven more
And run waggy-tailed,
Your deerskin slippers in my teeth
To meet you again at our door.
©2005 by Rebecca Lu Kiernan
Rebecca Lu Kiernan has published in Ms. Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, Space and Time, and numerous books and magazines in the U.S. and Australia. Her poetry collections include The Man Who Remembered Too Much (Ygdrasil Press) and Sex With Trees and Other Things Equally Responsive(2River Press). She was nominated for a Rhysling award, and edits the erotic fiction magazine, Gecko.
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