AT HUNT
Jason Schwartz
My wife kept the knives in a tidy row. Sometimes a game is made of such formations—don’t you find? And so she collects the needles and he extracts the hairpins as—observe—the blanket turns black. Or so goes our conjecture, as quaint as the names of the places. Or the ax in the pattern of the house. It catches the light or dispatches a shadow—though this is more often the case for widowers, isn’t it?
In certain histories of the romantic tale, ritual dictates a trembling of the hands.
Dowagers swallowed rings, platinum and otherwise, on such occasions— though I have this point on poor authority. They would trace the initials and burn the pages. Sometimes they hung them on hooks. Yes—oh, well, no. Hers sat—once, that I recall—on the windowsill. The panes and the blinds, a woman in a gown. Ageometry of nuptial detail. Which does put it grandly.
My wife kept the knife box. Caskets are also used for jewels, after all. Isn’t this pleasant to remember? Sometimes dowagers hung theirs on hooks—though a spike was more often the case, I take it. The wall is white, the die blue, the door as clean as a hatchet. To claim an old phrase. Set yours in the drawer, please, or beneath the sheet. Wear the ashes, in the manner of a dowager. Say my name.
In certain histories of ritual, romantic tales are nailed in the square.
The wife burns the husband’s clothing. The husband stands at the end of the corridor, on every floor. We do embrace our examples, sometimes, with undue devotion. The town—hadn’t it been founded by a benedict? Commencing with burnt posts on a lawn. Our house was less lovely, I am afraid. Pause here, at the door. Present yourself at the window, as she had, and now remove yourself from view.