[tab10]Where there is a doorbell[/tab10]
[tab10]there must be a door.[/tab10]
[tab15]—Don McKay[/tab15]
1
If a circle, C, is inside a triangle, T, then it entails
that C is smaller than T. The value of C would be unable
to hold its end of the equals sign. If the equation
were a gun-draw at dawn, C would lose by a hair
and buckle to its fate. Its lover and children
would mourn by its torn arms and wonder
why its body was built for bullets. If your hair
is a lighthouse, then your chest is a sea change.
If the earth rolls up on itself perpetually,
then drifters are sometimes lost in its folds
and that door we saw by the curb is gone
for good. If you believe everything I say,
then god help you. If you believe your mother,
then I am hardly fit to drown. But if you are a shoreline,
then I am a beached squid with so many hands,
if the moon shows and tides me back, the decisions
would outweigh me; I’d be abyssal
2
I make my decision all over your pillow. My decision
blossoms along the carpet. The sun’s shapes on the walls
are shadow-spotted by my decision’s traces on the window.
To decide is to cut at the navel. My decision cowlicks your hair.
To make love is to wrestle like thumbs. To pull out, to pull
all the way out is to anticipate the peak of indecision
and decide not to stay, but promise to come back
with tissues. You say my decisions would be smaller
if I didn’t wait so long to make them. To accumulate
is to build like clouds. I say it’s a simple matter of washing up,
but some of my decision has made its way to the doorknob.
3
If I decide to plant a door against the ground
and open it, what would greet me? To entail
is to extend from the hide. Decisions to do or
die are made under shared conditions
and may not be mutually exclusive. I unlace your bra,
you do it up again. I try at your hem and you say
I don’t listen. You say words drown in my ears.
Your ears are the ideal offspring of circles
and triangles. Your nose is shaped like the void
in my cheekbone, but your lips are ready for the shapes
of names. And if my ears are as deep as you say,
then words fall to the well of my head and I hear
their echoes; by then, you’ve already packed.
