Matinee

Mark Kraushaar

I'm not a marriage counselor. I don't know what's going on, and I

don't want to know, but I like you. I always liked you.

-- Joel and Ethan Coen, Blood Simple

He's the one driving, the man,

younger than her husband, nicer too.

It's grown dark and it's raining.

He says he likes her.

He says he's always liked her.

So, first pausing a little,

I didn't know that, she answers, which is when he

says it wouldn't make sense to start something new,

and which is also the moment we know they'll do just

that, start something, now, and next thing,

sure enough, they're out of their clothes

in some hot-sheet motel off the highway.

Of course, they're on the big screen

and we're in the world, so they wouldn't hear

the creepy movie music around them.

It spells out how inevitable

the future is, theirs no more than

anyone's maybe, but this is their story

and we're only watching so to take a break

from our own.

Still, how foolish and doomed the new couple seem.

It's something with the last of the light,

something in the way it disappears

in the trees, almost blue,

a kind of an echo.