Asymmetry
Asymmetry
by Ben Aultman-Moore
The last day I saw
The woman I was sleeping with
She said something that brushed by me,
No more than ruffled my hair—
To myself I said, Only another wind
on an already windy day.
Correction: she is more girl than woman.
Always well done, for the theatre,
a hike in wet woods, hair metal band,
symphony-orchestra, dim-dining, etc.
All the things we did, gumming us together
like glitter glue. She said, you’ve made me
Want to do more with myself. I smiled
Mechanically. The breeze swept up
warning a tide; I saw nothing.
Only, I kissed her cheek, a well manicured
Cheek, and lay down to sleep,
Chin-deep in warm and drowsy arrogance.
She leaves him, all right. What she said, “you’ve made me want to do more with myself” means more than just being with you, which he in his “arrogance” doesn’t see. To him they seem symmetrical, “gumming…together like glitter glue.” To her that’s too tight, enough to make them asymmetrical in her mind, so she splits. The hair business in the first stanza–his hair being “ruffled,” hers “always well-done” in a “metal band”–shows how restrictively close they were. A cunningly adept, self-deprecatory analysis by the narrator.