You are like a war novel, entirely lacking
female characters, except for an occasional
letter that makes one of the men cry.
I am like a table
that eats its own legs off
because it’s fallen
in love with the floor.
My frantic hand can’t find where my leg
went. You can play the tourniquet. A tree
with white limbs will grow here someday.
Or maybe a pup tent
that’s collapsed in on itself,
it so loves the sleep
of men sleeping beneath it.
The reason why women dislike war movies
may have something to do with why men hate
romantic comedies: they are both about war.
Perhaps I should
live in a pig’s trough.
There, I’d be wanted.
There, I’d be tasted.
When the mail bag drops from the sky
and lands heavy on the jungle floor, its letters
are prepared to swim away with your tears.
One letter reads:
I can barely feel
furtive. The other:
I am diminishing.
First published in The Kenyon Review New Series, Summer 2004, Vol. XXVI, No. 3. Copyright © Cate Marvin. Reprinted with permission of the author.