Tell Me One More Time

by Barry Basden

We sit across from each other
at this smooth mahogany table,
our opposing counsels
assessing exit strategies.

Mine has questions: Do you smoke?
How many cartons a week?
Do you eat out? how often?
Pages of interrogatories

to wear you down. No windows
in this Bushwhacker Room,
not even traffic noises from
Colfax Avenue can penetrate these walls;

no escape from harsh fluorescence,
a buzzing place suited to
anguish and guilt,
a room where no one wants to be.

The questions pound at you and
I wonder how it has come to this.
What finally led me to trick you here
when I once needed you so?

My young Turk beats you with the
terrible secrets of our past and I see
you flinch. Finally you sit quietly, wan and
still beside your lawyer in his rumpled blue suit.

I despise this aftermath of our failures,
this end to the disaster of our lives.
I would rather see something familiar,
your exhilarating rage, for instance.

If I had that butcher knife again,
I would slide it across the table and
you could come swishing it at me again,
making your low animal noises to startle this room.

I could once more reach for that blade,
and again see the fury
in your green eyes soften and fade
when blood begins to flow,

and I could hear
you tell me
one more time
that you love me.


*first published in The Legendary

Barry Basden is the editor of Camroc Press Review (http://www.camrocpressreview.com/)