“Do you like him?” my daughter asks,
looking up from her snack, open-faced,
doe-eyed. ‘Like?’ I think of the hunger
that takes my sleep. “Yes, no, not yet,
I don’t know,” I say. She is 14; I am 45.
We do not yet share the vocabulary
of this kind of love. Her question
hangs between us until I tell her:
The first time I saw love I was a gazelle,
a featherweight fleet of delicate hoof,
the skittish spring of prey in my joints,
my seamless heart able to rise and run
when love was only hours old. Bolted into
present tense, my memory shallow but
serviceable, I skirted the lions, ignored
the earth’s tremble when the elephants passed.
I saw only other gazelles; a chorus of grace,
curve of neck, the touch of tight haunches
as we ran. Our love songs held fast
to the chords of animal lust.
Like the wind we’d go.
Now I wake into love to discover
I am an elephant among elephants,
all of us made heavy by gravity’s embrace,
our grace circumstantial rather than given.
We fondle the bones of old love and dry dreams,
our memories deep and endless as the horizon,
our large hearts scarred and cracked,
but whole. After lust’s thunder we lower ourselves
into love’s silver pool. Knowing the thirst
and rage of loss, we douse each other,
fling the precious element to the sky
and sing. Prey only to time, we take our time,
ignoring the lions.
This is not the answer my daughter wanted
but she knows. Without another question,
she finishes her sandwich, stretches perfect
long limbs, bumps her slender hips against my wide
bottom as she passes and bounds out of the kitchen
nickering softly. There is just the clock’s
sweet lub-dub, the hours until
my lover arrives.
Copyright © Rhonda Riley