Quincy Lehr

Till It Hurts

Another gaze glazed vacuous and kind
On yet another date that Saturday.
She murmured reassurance as her mind
Filed its stale minutiae far away.

He smiled at her. He knew that each meant well,
Yet counted seconds till they got the bill.
He posed the question, wishing her in Hell,
But clinging to her fingers, even still.

While fitted for a fitting wedding pose,
They feel, at last, that tugging at the gut,
That let-down sag that everybody knows,
That moment when an unmarked door slams shut —

But still, they don their wedding gowns and shirts
And sigh out each pinched, claustrophobic thought,
Then hold their smiles, jaws clenched, until it hurts,
And blink at flash bulbs, sensing that they’re caught.

Companion Piece

“Till It Hurts” is an imagined life, or, rather, two imagined lives. The couple in question are loosely based on two people I saw in a restaurant in Oklahoma city on a visit back a few years ago. They were obviously a long-term couple and exhibited all the outward signs of deep, permanent devotion — holding hands, taking little nibbles of each others’ food, etc. — but they obviously bored the crap out of each other. All of the tawdry cute couple crap was all by rote, inertial. One almost wanted to say something, but what the hell do you say to two complete strangers based on the vagueness of the way they were looking at each other, the way there was nothing kinetic in their touches? I don’t mean in verse in this instance; I mean saying this to a real live pair of human beings. Soon enough, the friends for whom I was waiting arrived, and I stopped eavesdropping (which, let’s face it, I had been doing out of my own boredom). But that was, nevertheless, the genesis of the piece.