Wolf Lake

It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you know

your blood can spring like a hydrant.

That September, the horseflies were murder

in the valley. I’d come home to visit the family,

get in a couple of weeks of free food, hooked up

with a guy I’d known when I was a kid and things

went bad. When he cut me, I remember

looking down, my blood surprising as paper

snakes leaping from a tin. He danced me

around his basement apartment, dumped me

on the chesterfield, sat down beside me, and lit

a smoke. He seemed a black bear in the gloam,

shoulders rounded under his clothes,

so I tried to remember everything I knew

about black bears: whistle while you walk… carry bells…

if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you…

play dead. Everything slowed. I’ll tell you a secret.

It’s hard to kill a girl. You’ve got to cut her bad

and you’ve got to cut her right, and the boy had done neither,

Pain rose along the side of my body, like light.

I lay very still while he smoked beside me: this boy

I’d camped with every summer since we were twelve,

the lake so quiet you could hear the sound

of a heron skim the water at dusk, or the sound

of a boy’s breathing. I came-to in the trunk of his car,

gravel kicking up against the frame, dust coming in

through the cracks. It was dark. I was thirsty.

I couldn’t move my hands or legs,

The pain was still around. I think I was tied.

We drove that way for a long time before

the Chrysler finally slowed, then stopped. Sound

of gravel crunching under tires. I could smell the lake,

a place where, as kids, we’d come to swim

and know we’d never be seen. Logs grew

up from that lakebed. All those black bones

rising from black water. I remember,

we’d always smelled of lake water and of sex

by the end of the day, and there was a tape of Patsy

Cline we always liked to sing to on our way out —

which is what I thought we’d be doing that September

afternoon. That, or smoking up in his garage.

You know, you hear about the Body

all the time: They found the Body…

the Body was found… and then you are one.

Someone once told me the place had been

a valley, before the dam, before the town.

But that was a long time ago. When the engine stopped,

I heard the silver sound of keys in the lock

and then I was up on his shoulders, tasting blood.

I think he said my name. I think he walked

toward the woods.