Perhaps

Tara
Susan Atefat Peckham

Perhaps it was the length of his torso or the sway
of his legs like long slow reeds against wind, or
perhaps it was the tilt of his head when he first
greeted her, whatever it was, my cousin led
him to her bed, forgetting her husband, her child,
because this man meant more at that moment
than anything, than even the years it took
to build a life of pianos, and fine furniture,
rugs upon rugs, and silver. She must have known
he was too good for her, even then, she must
have known it watching him pore over the keys
with Tara, teaching her which songs to play
when she was grown, must have known that
no life like his would change for a woman
like her, after all, a man like that doesn't give
his life to a woman like her, and she curses
the day they met, curses that she ever made
love to him, curses the moment she kissed
the freckles on his shoulders, curses the very
floor they stood on when he said he loved her
the first time,
now, from a jail cell where Postars
have made her wait, now, Tara, her daughter,
in her husband's custody because that is how
it's done when a woman is unfaithful. And
the bars must look to her like the very lines
of memory, or music, or the passageways
between long legs, or the distances between
parallel lives, carefully measured, like comfort,
and obedience, and it doesn't matter anymore
what is said or what is left to be said, because
she thinks if she really tries she can make herself
disappear into the spaces between them, starts
by losing four pounds, then four more, so what
happens next makes no difference, and what
happens next, she's too far gone to notice,
her daughter is gone, her husband, gone, and
her lover kisses his own wife, who sits thick
with child eight months while he's unable
to shake this feeling he's responsible for
the entire world.
Yet he can easily choose one
woman over the other, and I wonder, how
easy decisions can come to a man, when they
come so slowly to me, the world, two hands
on my shoulders, my cousin, her prison,
a rifle, or a reed, a child, or, even, God, who
says one thing I hear a long while, I made
the moral choice.
I say, the right choice?
when the bars, the bars are not enough to punish
us clean, to close us in, to hold us back.