Unexploded
In an attempt to diffuse the situation,
he has peeled off her T-shirt, and she
– having totally misread his motivation –
stands bare-breasted, shivering and giggling:
partially from shyness,
partially from the cold,
but mostly from the anticipation.
How, then, could she not be shocked,
as he places his finger in her naval
and, drawing it up, opens her chest,
painlessly, and as easily as unzipping a jacket.
How can she not look down in bewildered awe,
as he slides those fingers between the layers of muscle
and, through a technique perfected through many years
of single-handed late-night bra-removal,
releases the eye-hooks that hold them in place.
All the while explaining how her friends and family
had expressed their concerns that she was burning out,
that she would self-destruct, and how this was
his final attempt to diffuse the situation.
A simple enough procedure, he reassures her,
at least, if the films are anything to go by:
All he would need to do is to find and cut
through the single red wire – or is the blue?
Finally, he reaches
the bonework prison door of her ribcage,
swinging easily open on its hinges,
and, taking his flashlight and his wirecutters,
peers inside to see – not, as he’d expected,
a single, obvious, coloured strand,
but a tangled mass of cables and filaments,
a spaghetti junction-box of signal-wires,
logic-circuits and communication cords.
“What? What is it?” She says.
sensing his sudden hesitation,
and leans forward to see for herself,
this complex and volatile knot inside her chest
This is the point when her initial astonishment
is replaced, not only by horror,
but by an intense and cold-blooded anger.
She starts to cry,
She screams at him to Just Fuck Off,
All too late, he dives for cover.
