And In This Corner, Regret
By: Loukia Borrell
Dreich
2021
I want to tell everyone in your town
About us, the truth about you and me.
Lovers when you were married.
Secret dinners at Trilogy. Sitting naked
On the roof of your trailer, smoking cigarettes
And drinking Heinekens until dawn.
Together in the shower at the campground
And the letters you always started with
“Hello Beautiful, life’s a drag without you.”
You stayed married and got kind of famous.
My life was ill-defined. Indecisive.
Adrift from job to job. Snap decisions.
Leaning into different men. Some of the sex
Was love, most of it was just exercise,
But I did get two of them to marry me.
One of them fathered my three children.
I held it together as long as I could, then,
I wrote to you, 25 years after the last time.
You were ecstatic. I was pleased, maybe
I wasn’t so old after all, I could still compete.
We can meet in Myrtle Beach for another go.
You landed twelve naked pictures of
Me and told me, “Holy Mackerel, Beautiful.”
Then, the talk was stale, unfocused, adrift.
The curtain fell, too heavy to lift or even part.
I made a few attempts to revive us, but you
Were gone. Now, I dream of destroying you.
Of ruining you, making just one phone call.
It could be to anyone.
The local newspaper.
TV stations.
Your perky girl Friday.
The lawyers whose clients hate you.
But then my people will know who I really am, too,
What I do and think about when I wander so,
Staying in this corner may be the only chance
I have to remember myself, years from now,
As someone who could still assemble a little class.
