Your day chased a runaway dog, your neck
the yanked leash you rub. But relief spies
on itself, synapses jam their shots. It takes
foreign incursion, muster of fingers, to rip
the cord, propel the graceful fall to oblivious–
she could rub suds in your eyes, rake
fingernails down your scalp, hold your head under
water. How delicious the forgetting:
you pay her to make you
a thing in her hands.

***

Evelyn Schiele is a poet and short story writer and a retired community college marketing administrator.  Based in a northern suburb of Chicago, she has traveled extensively throughout Europe. Her poetry and fiction have been published in Willow Review.