The Maynard
Spring 2014

I think that she has a world running up inside her like a geological fault line

and maybe she means what she says when she looks over at me and

maybe it matters that I want to believe her like she is speaking in tongues

and I am the one who always understands the words but sometimes

I look at her and only see a river that divides and rushes and rages and

storms over its banks to catch up towns and caress them into

nothingness and then I wonder why I want her to speak when her

words might come tumbling forth and be everything or nothing to

me but mostly I am concerned that one day she will look up

at the sky or down at her feet or maybe it will be something even

less significant and suddenly she will break apart like a building

that we once watched fall together and it was strong one moment

and the next it was slipping into a pile of everything that it once

was but without the significance and so sometimes I ask her if

she ever wants to just forget what we have left but she only ever

smiles and for now I know the river is calm, the quake is still a

long way off.