&,!

by Hallie Pritchett


A young woman devoted to
an illusion. Two people entirely prone,
reverent underneath the weight of
something that never really existed — Except for
the small moments. You were only mine
in the dark, in the secret that it seems like everybody knew 
anyway. I see the pictures
and I see faces, quizzical and knowing anyway. 
Sideways eyes. Hats turned back
and firelight, the way there always is 
in this kind of thing anyway. 
Have you ever seen a man’s eyes gone gray?
Have you ever heard a real prayer uttered in pure white light
while a sacrificial lamb dies underground? Not really.
It was just the side of a hill. But the ground is above us
and all the lights are out. Everyone is asleep
and part of me just kept sleeping. Part of me drifted off
and stayed asleep in the plaid, in the during. 
In the during. Enduring. And dying
as you’ve known yourself, dying at the hand
of …. Of not raising a single eyebrow?
Why couldn’t the baby teeth, the white wool
you’ve always written about, learn to bite? Why 
do all my questions start that way? 
Who is to answer them? A letter
with no return address, a feature turned off, a bottle full of fire
thrown over a ducked head?  
Four dots to symbolize the way I saw you
as God intended you. Can anyone say the same? 
If you vanished forever, would the only people to miss you
be the tricked? Or is the trick itself the sacrifice?


* * * * *

Hallie Pritchett has no credentials. She lives in a shoebox apartment next to a Southern college campus. Eventually, she hopes to experience a Bible-level miracle. She does not clean that apartment enough, but she can do a backflip off of a diving board if it’s high enough off the ground, and in her mind that ought to count for something.