THE TOO DARK TUNNEL OF A HALLWAY DREAM, DESPAIR, THE ONE WHO SHOULD BE NOTHING TO ME ONLY CARES FOR ASIAN GIRLS

by Lyn Lifshin

there’s been rumors, some
pretty blatant moves. Still,
it’s a dance. But then, what
isn’t and being
at this retreat in the trees,
nothing is quite the way it
should be. Each move seems
new. Rooms dug out into the
earth, small caves who knows
what animals could burrow
in. With only candles, so
little light. A low down musk.
There can’t be showers.
No windows for stars. Later
the dream will make me so
enraged, so wildly sure
little is left to live for, but there
must have been pale roots
of flowers like upside down
trees and the warmth from so
many bodies laughing and
giggling thru bark and leaves
and buried opals, bone of a last
emperor, gold circling a princess’
bones. Forget the crawlies, the
slime. I was doing that, getting
ready to make a bed in the tent
like corner, thinking of a week
of dance I’d saved all I had
for when he, the teacher, the
one that made dance more than
just ballroom—the joy in his
arms and how for weeks his words
were his hands, my skin still
glowed from them. Or was it a
bruise? If it wasn’t, it would be
when I saw him climb the earth to
be past me, a new pale new
different Asian woman this time,
an Asian slip of a girl, long hair
flowing like sea weed and he
holding her to him like she was,
she would be part of himself