poemeleon

Ruth Foley

I am a huge fan of rules, and live by my own, but when someone else applies a rule to me, I get rebellious. And stubborn. My favorite question is “Why?” and my second favorite question is “Why not?” Teenagers love me. Their parents, not always so much.

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Never Have I Ever

Seen the fish, but held myself from gasping for the illusion of grub or meal.

I have never sat on a stone wall with my feet hanging over the water, never watched the falling stars or their reflection.

Besides, what falls and what shoots? And how to know?

All of my songs are exile songs, but I have written none of them.

I have never spiraled like snow, never risen when I was supposed to be drifting. I have never burst in a surprise of glitter.

Tethered myself or allowed myself to lift. Been lifted.

Once the rain begins, I have never asked it to cease.

I have been doubled, but never recognized. Have been almost halved. I have never known the difference, it seems.

Against an alligator, I have never lost.

Have never been found or founded. Nor inhaled the dust of mortar.

I would have said I had never thought of delphiniums, but I never lie about the important things. I never knew its larkspur secret, never knew its poison.

I have never painted my eyes with the dust from a moth, and would bet you have never either.

If I bet at all, which I never do.

I have never crouched beneath a hedge, waiting for snakes. I have never believed in the snake before it came.

Have you seen shrimp and thought fingers? Held fluttering and thought froth?

I have never closed my eyes in front of a fire, never sat outside the smoke, never trusted the end of smoldering.

I do not recognize birds by their nests or calls. And I do not answer.

In the rumble of an engine, I never hear escape.

I have never drowned a hornet in a bird bath, but I have let one sink. I've laid a branch for honeys or bumbles.

Not once have I stood aghast at the blue.

I'm told it's possible to miss yourself in a mirror or a photograph. It is said we do not recognize our own voice.

If led to something pulsing, I cannot help but reach.

Listen: no one wants to believe this, but I have never laid my longing down in the tumble.

Improvisation

I wanted him to press me to the wall. I wanted his hands on my wrists, my hands beside my head while he made me wait for his mouth. I wanted his mouth. I didn't want to wait.

Beneath it all, the knowledge that we could be known.

I want to say that in another room, someone was laughing, but that was another time. No one else was alive. Or maybe everything was arrested.

One of us was untrustworthy. One of us was foolish.

Maybe the wall was plaster. Maybe it was panel. I have seen rough-hewn wood, horse hair, dry wall, brick, stone, cinder, mud. It could have been any of these, but I am keeping secrets.

He rose to me. I wanted him taller than me. I wanted to be lifted or beset. His mouth, his mouth.

If I say this never happened, I am lying somewhere.

If I say this never happened, I have broken my contract.

And when I say never, I mean not yet or I mean we are good at pretending or I mean only in my mind or only in his or I mean never at the same time. When I say never I mean why not.

I am my own unreliable narrator.

So listen: sometimes after everyone has gone to bed, I come awake, driven to a wall or to decisions I am beyond making. Sometimes I can hear an airplane and know there are men on it, traveling, and none of them knows me and none of them has my taste in his mouth. It is late and maybe only one of them is reading. Hell, I don't even know where they are going.

Or me.

But I would go there with him.

My favorite means of transport is invented. There I go again.

Not every wall is metaphorical.

I have spent weeks wondering if I had bees in my ear or blood. Now I am wondering whose blood it is.

I have broken other things than contracts. I have cracked glass in my hand. I have been the glass.

I was back-flat to the wall, I say. When I opened my mouth, it was not to speak.



 

The End

A catalogue of all the ways we are
unthinkable would be unthinkable
to start: you've reinforced your ground, repaired
your architecture, your methodical

foundations. We're unsuited. Well, I am—
that is, if I can be believed. And I've
been proved untrustworthy since we began.
My motives are steel treachery. I lie.

So one of us should go. If we agree
to never speak of this, we can postpone
the demolition, maybe. If you stayed,
I could not help but trace the able bones

of your wrist, your forearm balanced on one knee.
Now please could you please now kiss me now please?

"Never Have I Ever" first appeared in Prime Number.

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Ruth Foley lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches English for Wheaton College. Her work appears in numerous web and print journals, including Antiphon, The Bellingham Review, The Louisville Review, and Sou’wester. She is the author of two chapbooks, Dear Turquoise (dancing girl press) and Creature Feature (ELJ Publications). She serves as Managing Editor for Cider Press Review.