then i remembered how my mother
was the most excellent of wrappers
together we would sit and conceal
the family’s christmas gifts
she’d be applying the last piece of tape
to her sixth
they all appeared factory-wrapped
pulled tight and pristine
while i’d just finished cutting the paper
for my second

now in my own living room
some years later
i finally got to wondering, how does one become
such an accomplished gift-wrapper?

mostly from giving a lot
of gifts i’d think

But I’ve got over two thousand dollars in the bank, I said, as if my own account was the only one that mattered.

Women can’t hold property anymore, she said. It’s a new law. Turned on the TV today?

No, I said.

Did they say why? I said.

He didn’t answer that. We’ll get through it, he said, hugging me.

You don’t know what it’s like, I said. I feel as if somebody cut off my feet. I wasn’t crying. Also, I couldn’t put my arms around him.

…

Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I’ll always take care of you.

I thought, Already he’s starting to patronize me.

Then I thought, Already you’re starting to get paranoid.

I know, I said. I love you.

That night, after I’d lost my job, Luke wanted to make love. Why didn’t I want to? Desperation alone should have driven me. But I still felt numbed. I could hardly even feel his hands on me.

What’s the matter? he said.

I don’t know, I said.

We still have … he said. But he didn’t go on to say what we still had. It occurred to me that he shouldn’t be saying we, since nothing that I knew had been taken away from him.

We still have each other, I said. It was true. Then why did I sound, even to myself, so indifferent?

He kissed me then, as if now I’d said that, things could get back to normal. But something had shifted, some balance. I felt shrunken, so that when he put his arms around me, gathering me up, I was small as a doll. I felt love going forward without me.

He doesn’t mind this, I thought. He doesn’t mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other’s, anymore. Instead, I am his.

Unworthy, unjust, untrue. But this is what happened.

###

Passage excerpted from Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale.

—B. Zander

could we know
if sun needs earth from
deliberateness of light?
truly that seems to me
(at least partially)
a matter of induction

Retracing the small-town streets of our common histories on a warm night, he observed that seasoned urbanites, when presented with blank sidewalk, cannot help but walk—and if this means moving in the direction of no particular destination, learned nature will preside—as if the zen of no-particular-destination alone could fail to suffice.

This seemed natural, and so we walked. We talked until we ran out of long, small-towne blocks. Then we retraced our steps, pushing the boundaries of the other direction, talking into the wee hours.

Seasoned urbanites cannot help but walk.

Now I do not think this is so.

It’s true that metered city geography tells time. It tells textured, experiential time. (Or perhaps experience tells time.)

I’ll feel like myself again; just give me a block.

The drive from my place to Anaka’s old neighborhood takes one cigarette.

The T ride to Park Street is 10 engrossing pages.

Stand-still city geography imprints and raises experience, firmly fixed in time. Many of my experiences are those of anotherness. Some are, fondly, just mine.

There’s still smoke and lights in February.

The street did look different when I returned.

I am glad you kissed me for too long by that door.

Dancing days are here again.

Why is a flower lovelier when it hasn’t been planted?

Falafel mystery, solved with zen.

There a few things more lovely than a hand-holding couple conversing slowly home in spite of the rain.

I stand still, for the apprehension.