Hobble Creek Review
| Rachel Bunting |
Flaws in Human Thinking
That you have a single definition.
That this single definition cannot change or multiply.
That your foot inside a wingtip shoe or rollerblade or sneaker will never fail.
That failing is part of your single definition that cannot change or multiply, that
you are always going to fail because of this one time your foot failed to maintain
its grip on the bike pedal and you came down on your face, your mouth mashed
against the curb, your teeth splitting against the asphalt and the warm taste of
iron flooding your mouth, your throat, your nose, as the ambulance siren wailed
eventually toward you.
That you cannot be fixed, what happened to your mouth and nose will always be
a tangible reminder of the failure that follows you everywhere, pink scars
crisscrossing your face.
That the girl who works the register at the pharmacy and reads alone in the
History section at Borders will fail to love you because of the pink scars
crisscrossing your face, because those scars remind her that you once failed,
which means you will fail again and everyone will always know because you
present a reminder of this failure to the entire world every time you leave your
house, and she cannot possibly love someone who is so unwittingly honest.
That this is the only girl you will ever want to love you.
That the girl who instead works nights as a toll collector on the New Jersey
Turnpike at Interchange 5 cannot be as intoxicatingly beautiful as the girl at
the pharmacy because she, too, has scars, but hers web her hands and you can
see them through the latex gloves she wears, and you always want to ask her
about them as you pay your tolls on the way home from work but never do
because strangers don’t share this kind of intimacy, and also because you are
busy thinking about the girl at the pharmacy.
That the girl who is a toll collector would not tell you if you did ask.
That the girl who is a toll collector would not want to walk along the river bank
four miles from her toll booth, letting you hold her scarred hands and explaining
how once, when she was seven, she put her hands through a window to see if she
could bring the beautiful sky inside.
That you have a single definition.
That this single definition cannot change or multiply.
That your foot inside a wingtip shoe or rollerblade or sneaker will never fail.
That failing is part of your single definition that cannot change or multiply, that
you are always going to fail because of this one time your foot failed to maintain
its grip on the bike pedal and you came down on your face, your mouth mashed
against the curb, your teeth splitting against the asphalt and the warm taste of
iron flooding your mouth, your throat, your nose, as the ambulance siren wailed
eventually toward you.
That you cannot be fixed, what happened to your mouth and nose will always be
a tangible reminder of the failure that follows you everywhere, pink scars
crisscrossing your face.
That the girl who works the register at the pharmacy and reads alone in the
History section at Borders will fail to love you because of the pink scars
crisscrossing your face, because those scars remind her that you once failed,
which means you will fail again and everyone will always know because you
present a reminder of this failure to the entire world every time you leave your
house, and she cannot possibly love someone who is so unwittingly honest.
That this is the only girl you will ever want to love you.
That the girl who instead works nights as a toll collector on the New Jersey
Turnpike at Interchange 5 cannot be as intoxicatingly beautiful as the girl at
the pharmacy because she, too, has scars, but hers web her hands and you can
see them through the latex gloves she wears, and you always want to ask her
about them as you pay your tolls on the way home from work but never do
because strangers don’t share this kind of intimacy, and also because you are
busy thinking about the girl at the pharmacy.
That the girl who is a toll collector would not tell you if you did ask.
That the girl who is a toll collector would not want to walk along the river bank
four miles from her toll booth, letting you hold her scarred hands and explaining
how once, when she was seven, she put her hands through a window to see if she
could bring the beautiful sky inside.
Rachel Bunting lives and writes in New Jersey, somewhere between
the Pine Barrens and the Delaware River. Her poems currently appear
or are forthcoming in a number of print and online journals including
Boxcar Poetry Review, Weave Magazine, Apparatus Magazine, Wicked
Alice, and Tuesday: An Art Journal. She has been included in
anthologies for Best of the Net (2009) and Best of the Web (2009), and
is currently at work on a full-length manuscript.
the Pine Barrens and the Delaware River. Her poems currently appear
or are forthcoming in a number of print and online journals including
Boxcar Poetry Review, Weave Magazine, Apparatus Magazine, Wicked
Alice, and Tuesday: An Art Journal. She has been included in
anthologies for Best of the Net (2009) and Best of the Web (2009), and
is currently at work on a full-length manuscript.
| Home / About / Masthead / Submissions / Contact / Current Issue / News / Archives |
