Sinister: we lay on the bed there, kissing just for

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.

again with the smoking. in the last few days, i have discovered an odd 
comfort in standing in a soft snowstorm, a cigarette smoking away in my 
hand, not knowing for certain which clouds coming from my mouth are smoke 
and which are breath, and thinking that the difference is poetic.

maybe i started smoking just so i have something to write about 
consistently, and with pleasure. my poems are leaden with ashes.

the man at the chinese shop gave me two fortune cookies today, and one 
fortune says 'your luck has been completely changed today.' the other: 'a 
person is never too old to learn.'

and i believe the prediction and the cliche.

he called thursday night, drunk and wanting to see me. so i roused, washed 
my face, got ready, left. let him hold my hand, and let him lead me away 
from the party and back to my apartment, let him kiss me, let him again 
under the tangle of blue and white checked sheets. i listened again to our 
shallow breathing, and watched his closed eyes hover above my opened own.

he said when you kiss someone with open eyes, you do not trust him. i did, 
and i didn't. trust fell away with each time i said no, with each time he 
ventured further down and down under the blanket, under the comforter my 
mother bought me two years ago, for the dorm, for my bed. no went from a 
whisper to a stronger voice, and my rasping was no longer from lust but from 
fear. he finally fell away into sleep, and i realized the bed reeked of 
alcohol. he reeked of alcohol. and i wondered again why he had not called 
before he was staggering, and why i had been staggering toward him for so 
long without answer.

he has said he blacked out; he just remembers telling me he loved me, just 
remembers the question he asked and the answer i refused. he is going to 
stop drinking, he said. he could never hurt me, and never live with himself 
if he did. he does not want me to be scared of him, he said, and will spend 
the rest of his days proving to me who he is, and why fear is unnecessary.

and i will spend the rest of my days without him, but with the lesson i 
heave learned, with the pending moment wherein i say no for the final, 
triumphant time. i will watch him leave, and remember that distance and time 
are not made up in a bottle and a bed, or in the apologies that follow.

fear is tangible, and always, always beneath the quivering surface of my 
hands, my mouth. i think they like it, misunderstanding the reasons for it. 
taking my hands, frigid from february winds, and warming them, relishing in 
the return of blood to my veins, their heroic response to need, action 
relinquishing wait. i wonder who it will be on that day, that day when he 
will see that the fear is not for them, for him, but for me. for what i do.

yesterday was one of calm detachment, a separation from the way things are 
and a reporter's objectivity taking the reins again, steering.

today the sun is shining. everything is melting, and so am i.

los desaparecidos means 'the disappeared ones.' vocal dissidents who speak, 
and are silenced quickly and finally.

here is to los desaparecidos, and here is to those who silence them.

xxx lou



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