Marianne – brown hair,
laughing eyes, playful as a dolphin –
walked arm-in-arm with me
down the midway
of one of those tacky little
traveling carnivals
that squatted the parking lot
of the parkade from time to time.
“I love you,” I heard her say.
I think I smiled.
I know my step
augmented its spring.
I said nothing.
Once tired of the noise,
martini-shaking rides,
candy apples and crowds,
we left. I was the one
with the driver’s license
and the parents’ Falcon.
“You’re going the wrong way,” she said.
“That depends on where we’re going, “I said.
No more was said.
I curled through the outskirts
to the old mill dam, unused as mill dam,
used as playground for underage beer drinkers.
We sat down on rocks
uncluttered with cans
near the flowing water.
“Say it to me again,” I said.
Maude Larke lives in France with the ghost of her last cat. Her credo is ‘never wear two things of the same color when hiking’. She has this bad habit of collecting things and getting antsy when people begin to touch the items in the collections. Especially the pebble collection. She thoroughly admits that she teaches as a day job out of sadism. Publications include Naugatuck River Review,Cyclamens and Swords, riverbabble, Doorknobs and BodyPaint, Sketchbook,Cliterature, and Short, Fast, and Deadly, among others.
