Pare

Ravel

          after the myth of Ariadne & Theseus

Nothing in you is domesticated were your first words when I knew
you saw me clear, a woman standing with her skein
spooled tight, a labor gathered and unspent. I know just enough 
of myth to make it mean, the long lines we lift out 
so we might find our path back in. Whatever else she learns, the man 
that she unravels through the cave is not the same one 
she spins back. What he keeps of her is only what he makes himself: 
a stage play with an exit door. A scene. 

                                    And she of him keeps only what she gleans, 
a measured coil of days unraveling like a milky thread. Not 
a revel but the raving of a plate licked clean, 
a lavished glass, a backwards glance at every coin spilt, spent 
on leaving. Not a fable burnished, finished, 
but a woman ravaged, reeling.

The Onion

We peeled ours fast. I told you
there’s a way to keep yourself
from weeping when you slice it.

You sent me a theology of onions,
a well-loved chapter made me 
cry. Apparently the trick

to stave off tears is put it
in the freezer first to slow 
the watery blood, that patient ice 

delays the stinging juices 
ripening when they meet 
the air. It gives you time

enough to cut it clean.

Pare

The ripe pear ruddies just a bit
more green before it’s split
into its halves, what was once

one thing, severed.
The winter trees, you say, 
are brave to simply stand

there, seen. Between any 
two things, possibility
of bridges burnt, or built.

What is it to fracture,
what to cleave?