The Husband As Mentalist
BY REBECCA HAZELTON
Think of a number.
Hold in your mind the age you were
when you first realized
your body couldn’t be trusted
to take care of you.
Maybe the first kiss, that boy
with a penknife, or maybe
what came after.
Maybe it was bleeding
every month and then the month you didn’t.
Or the running
leap and the short fall marked,
the pebble gravel spraying.
Or the bike tumbling
into the ditch and the long gash
in the leg’s meat.
The moment can vary.
The tells don’t.
The way your mouth moves
and I follow.
How you toss
your hair, as if to say,
just get on with it.
But waiting
is something I’d like
to teach you, just like I’d like
to teach you how to touch without touching,
how I know
which door you’ll walk through
before you do,
the way you sweeten your coffee
until it’s syrup.
Lying is wrong, and so I always tell you
the truth
about why you want
the things you want.
The easiest thoughts to find
are the ones that mean
something, if only to you.
When you got up from that ditch
your sock was red with blood.
You walked home
because you knew
no one was coming, and the cars passed
with their bright headlights,
en route to warm houses
where mothers pick up on the first ring
and fathers carry
girls with scraped knees home.
Maybe you didn’t know
your own number and that’s why
no one answered.
It was nothing, you say,
but nothing is also a number.
