SARA QUINN RIVARA

Last Date with Narcissus

See how the water reflects the shore?
he said. Instead, it absorbed—dull
as the wounds of the dead. We watched
plovers guard their nests, a lip of light whip-
stitch the horizon. Night seeped up like a gas:

and anesthetized, love-dumb, I, demure girl
echoed as he talked about himself. The lake
grappled with the sky; how he flattered! He whispered,
cajoled. Leaned a leg over the edge of the dock,
pulled out his cock. Sand like salt, a pillar
of tree—I shrugged, said why not? There was a curl

of wind, a scatter of seeds. I suffered a kind
of blindness: I loved, & nothing back. It’s not
that you’re unattractive, he said. South Manitou
Island lowered its ursine head. The lake steeled
itself beneath the sky. Beachgrass, jackpine, sand.

A field of narcissus by the two-track road. The bay
beckoned memory, forget. He held my hand, clutched
the back of my neck. The lake a silvered glass: flawed,
it showed only his face back. And that icon saw me
not at all—not lake, not sky, not human breath. A flower

with a yellow center. Then I pushed his hand down.
I swallowed my heart. I let that man drown.