“Unviolence” | Amital Shaver | Poetry

Unviolence

Amital Shaver

My reflection was wearing the peridot earrings that I felt awfully sad for, sitting on the foam of their white box. The reckoning man and I—our minds frozen to this marley floor. We both knew of crumpled car magazines in hospice lobbies and sticking fudge into the gears of our brains to slow the fall of rotting thought. We had both left things on the foam of a white mattress. In the reckoning man’s voice, there was a sponginess. This was not familiar.

I was instructed to sit down by tender eyes and furrowed brows. And the way the reckoning man sat—with his knees in his armpits instead of legs out, feet pointed, hands impatiently on thighs— cracked a rib of mine to pour out molten rock drenched in benzene. This mass had been sitting pretty, all too patient behind the stacked bones it could tap a melody out on if it was bored. My skull swam. My throat blackened.

I knew it when it came near and I felt it when it was said and I saw it where it was held. It was held under the soft fleshy part of the abdomen where you keep things that are prone to rupture and scream when you knock on their door to tell them dinner’s ready. They prowl, and let you know clearly of the act of grand larceny that they are going to commit.

Is it theft if it wants to be taken? That is my stomach’s suggestion.

On this cold marley floor, the space between my ears collapsed. I clutched my knees to my clavicle. I wished for a car magazine.