by John Dutterer
She will leave me for a man with a full head of hair, dark hair always slightly tousled like some pop stars over the age of forty. His hair will be a sensual crown right out of the Song of Songs. My hair, thin enough, has the color and texture of straw, no, cut grass that hasn't quite become straw; as such, it might be of interest to farm animals but regardless my hair is of no interest to her.
She will leave me for some Brit, some chap with a name like Wallace or Fergus or worst of all, Ian. I will be utterly abandoned, all because I don’t make routine transatlantic flights or know anything about tea and above all because I don’t have...the accent. The “no dirt under my fingernails” accent. I have no accent, as far as I can tell.
She will leave me for a man who swears constantly, as if angry (of course he’s angry; I know how she is). He swears like crickets chirp. No, he swears the way lion tamers whip the lions, the way lions instinctively mangle lion tamers. And make no mistake he’ll be wearing four thousand dollars worth of tattoos mostly depictions of serpents and skeletons. Me, I have an appropriate word for everything, and no blemishes of any kind.
She will perhaps leave me not for a man (nor a woman) but for...silence, my auditory opposite, that heaven to which I am denied admittance.
Until then, joy beyond words! She is still here.
She will leave me for a man with a full head of hair, dark hair always slightly tousled like some pop stars over the age of forty. His hair will be a sensual crown right out of the Song of Songs. My hair, thin enough, has the color and texture of straw, no, cut grass that hasn't quite become straw; as such, it might be of interest to farm animals but regardless my hair is of no interest to her.
She will leave me for some Brit, some chap with a name like Wallace or Fergus or worst of all, Ian. I will be utterly abandoned, all because I don’t make routine transatlantic flights or know anything about tea and above all because I don’t have...the accent. The “no dirt under my fingernails” accent. I have no accent, as far as I can tell.
She will leave me for a man who swears constantly, as if angry (of course he’s angry; I know how she is). He swears like crickets chirp. No, he swears the way lion tamers whip the lions, the way lions instinctively mangle lion tamers. And make no mistake he’ll be wearing four thousand dollars worth of tattoos mostly depictions of serpents and skeletons. Me, I have an appropriate word for everything, and no blemishes of any kind.
She will perhaps leave me not for a man (nor a woman) but for...silence, my auditory opposite, that heaven to which I am denied admittance.
Until then, joy beyond words! She is still here.
John Dutterer thinks our worldly concerns look fairly trivial compared with this.
