This is not a polite conversation.

It’s a death march for every line
they’ve ever wanted to steal
from their favorite movies.

One of those elderly ballads
where the woman is wearing a dress
that’s tight around the neck
and the man is dressed like an old-time preacher
who may or may not be rich.

They’re standing beside a tree
older than the church and cemetery put together,
and the river is doing most of the talking.

The wind is constantly trying to interrupt,
but only the grass can be compelled to listen.

She’s missing a tooth in the back of her mouth.
He may or may not be hiding a knife in his left boot.
She thinks innocence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
He may or may not have gin behind everything he says.

They’ll hold like that until something terrible happens.

Something terrible is always bound to happen.
Something terrible has always happened
for every time they’ve been alive and in this position.

This conversation is pretty much the same thing.

They don’t know that or anything about history.
No idea as to how many times they’ve done this before.

They just wait for the other one to talk.
They listen to each other breathing
and the unrelated celebration going on
in the parking lot just outside their motel room.

Something big has gone down tonight,
and the morning-after disaster
won’t even begin to cover it.

There’s going to be more screaming,
more mistakes and more acts of kindness
than this town will know what to do with.

But they won’t know anything about that.

She knows what it means to have a winning smile,
and he may or may not be more scared of her
than he is of his shadow or traveling alone.

Lord knows what they’ll be like in the morning

Even when something terrible happens,
it manages to be different every single time.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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