NELLE 5 | 2022
The dog was sleek, brindled.
He couldn’t help people
wanting to touch him.
The silence of the beautiful is easy
to misconstrue.
I offered first my hand, then my face.
What’s very large
is often hard to see.
His menace was like that.
What happens fast
can only be experienced
in retrospect.
His bite was like that.
I leaned into peril. Sweetly.
As if into a kiss.
I was always like that.
My face was sleek.
It caused its usual commotion.
The dog was brindled,
big as a man.
Once more, I was almost lucky.
A surgeon can revise
what a wound has written,
amend the story a dog’s teeth made.
But I prefer to see my judgment
lapsed, then risen on my face.