“Knowing was a temptation.
What you don’t know won’t tempt you.”
––– Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
You were a test, a puzzle to see if my intuition
was real, or if I was again shutting the door
to my heart before it was ever opened.
I looked at your handsome face, watched
the mirror of your eyes bloom with my own reflection
and heard my name play across your lips.
There was a certain comfort in temptation,
the thrill of risk, a delicious purr inviting
danger to cut resistance into shredded ribbon.
I stood on the edge waiting to leap, wondering
if there was space in me for the contagion of regret.
Then I felt the shift, the prickly certainty of harm.
I wasn’t a woman, but a thing, a prey to destroy not cherish.
My reflection was no longer in your eyes…I watched as every
female in the room passed through them.
Without a word I walked away.
I questioned discernment when I already knew the answer.
My inner voice insisted it wouldn’t ever betray me with silence.
©Susie Clevenger 2023
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