REASSESSING LAYLA
by Savanna Reid

1

Abruptly as our eyes met, we could tell

a flash of interest threatened to infuse

the day’s agenda with surprise, propel

our thoughts off-track in tandem, and confuse

already heightened nerves as we attacked

a series of preliminary tests

designed to ferret out our souls’ exact

dimensions.  Thoughts gone, sizing up your breasts,

oblivious, while you were staring, too,

with unimpressed reciprocation, I

glanced twice.  Behind your cocked up smile, I knew,

a knee-jerk nod for brainless praise slipped by.

That forced impatience kicked me back in gear

to close in on the goal that brought us here.

2

A common cause and competition lay

between your overdrawn attention and

the dogged admiration on display

in every ineffective underhand

attempt I made to ease a real smile out

of your diffuse expressions, bored to blank

reflexive dedication, a devout

zen workaholic gunning hard for rank.

You’d laugh for a promotion, but for me

you saved a beautiful disdain that said,

forget the hold out maverick fantasy.

I couldn’t drop the game – your flash of red

presented a distraction I required,

keeping my unanchored thoughts hot wired.

3

Against the odds, with heady parallel

objectives, we collided at a bar,

where I stood stunned, just drinking in your well

constructed net of lies, each one just far

enough from being true to suit a drunk

inversion of your personality,

the over willing flipside of a monk

who dressed her blushes up in irony.

You must have loved the chance to lead the scene

along for obligation’s sake, assigned

a stunt requiring you to tease, lean,

flaunt your lips at thin air, stumble to grind,

til I responded to your nakedly

persuasive ploy and kissed your victory.

4

Ambitions poised to bring our worst to play,

we had a confrontation coming, but

to clear my reputation and repay

the slight, I had a vengeful itch to glut.

Before an audience, I pinned your pride

against a wall and worked you, so our peers

would know the reckless lust was yours to hide

that night – I’d brought you to the brink of tears

before the moment’s sadism hit home.

Dumbfounded, I took stock of what I’d done.

Disgrace showed up your strength – you flailed to comb

the air with helpless hands, but yelled ‘you won’

in just the tone of unimpacted rage

a goddess drops on men who fail their age.

5

Nerves buckled with idealists’ pride, we forged

new terms – a mock-apologetic truce

allowed us to beat ploughshares into swords,

half-convinced ourselves that we’d torn loose

our traitor hearts and joined a better fight

by shifting our hostilities from sex

to higher ground.  We even managed trite

endearing conversations: voice box checks

to prove we wouldn’t waver, weren’t afraid

to share the secrets teasing friends enjoy.

The show of cool, the reconciling, made

our competition feel more fierce – destroy

the outright struggle, and a darker game

evolves beneath the surface just the same.

6

A sparring match of double-edged half-lies

transmuted into gestures full of trust

cemented us as colleagues.  Doubt implies

uncertainty, and confidence men must

maintain an aura of all-knowing calm.

Sheer habit made the bitter ruse feel real.

The night you claimed revenge, I felt your palm

twist in my hand, our fingers kiss to steal

a moment back from the unraveling

illusion of alliance you cut short.

I broke and showed my hand, forgetting

how I’d planned to let a common cause distort

our chemistry from spark to catalyst

for something more than us, as honor’s grist.

7

When duty’s bitter, faithless face informed

me your betrayal went beyond that touch,

– that, pretending to believe our cause, you’d wormed

your way inside for sabotage – such

cynical determination seemed right,

in keeping with the grim, detached façade

made honest by your inner beauty’s light.

I turned on you reluctantly, with flawed

convictions, strength to prove, and pain to burn,

uncertain my emotions could obey

their orders, but aware you wouldn’t spurn

a chance to make amends, or push away

a lover you had tortured past what you

could stand to realize, who still seemed true.

8

Against your sworn allegiance, deeper ties

were said to bind you to our enemies.

I’d use our history to improvise

a way to trace your operations, ease

into your private sphere, and excavate

the secret aims encoded in your drive

to wage a war too surgical for hate,

too delicate for faith.  But to arrive

in reach of your best guarded plan, to gain

a careless trust that seemed beyond your means,

I had to break the one-way windowpane

through which you look on me; doubt intervenes

with every feeling now, it’s what we share.

I played yours up, and met your searching stare.

9

Knuckled down, refusing to snap – a love

I thought we’d killed already reared its dense

head, wild with foolproof instincts fit to shove

down madcap hope’s blind rabbit hole.  Plain sense

fell back and gave the field to deeper guides,

our curiosities and cruelties,

the natural tools for wars a duel decides.

We axed our nerves to stoke our vanities,

intrigued with our effects on one another,

half forgetting what we really wanted.

Each manipulation brought us farther

down a path of mystery – we hunted

truths about our mixed intentions haltingly,

as though our quest were for uncertainty.

10

Already drunk on intimate deceit’s

intensities, we rushed the sex scene, quick

to stamp out telling flutters in the beats

our unenlisted hearts fell to, short thick

disrhythmic drum rolls pulsing oxygen

to ear tips, navels, heels, and fingers numb

with energy and ice: a cymbal span

of real capitulation, loud and dumb.

We hit your bed and ground desire out

between our hands and mouths and then pushed through

to prove we could exhaust ourselves without

releasing tension from the game we knew

we needed to preoccupy ourselves.

The hollow well of artifice taunts, delves.

11

High-wire revelation feints above

the threat of failure kept my knotted gut

from chewing on the feeling that a glove

of sheer excitement disengaged us, shut

off fears we’d almost managed to confront.

I rummaged around while you slept, to risk

your snap reaction, a compulsive stunt.

Come morning, you seemed too awake, your brisk

warmth too inviting for your temperament.

I plied your jumpiest nerves back in bed,

and pushed my luck over breakfast, to hint

at our détente’s real mood – you winced, half-fed

but hardly hungry now that I had tripped

your one live wire.  Our positions flipped.

12

The hazard’s mist, our total twinned defeats

in some vague nightmare resolution, hugged

the air between us, puckering clear sheets

of panic ice that seized the room.  You shrugged

my rash mistake off, smiling sadly.

I grasped the double loss with a crackling

insight made bearable only by madly

uptaking adrenaline, thoughts backing

out your door ahead of me, neat plans crushed.

I stalked your delayed reaction as though

my blunder had been purposeful – I’d flushed

your conspiracy out.  Your move might show

me everything, if urgency to end

our strained entanglement pushed your hand.

13

A frenzy for the key half-truths hurled us

away from caution violently – a bleak

revealing ambush cut our disastrous

adventure off, to leave us holding weak

and uninstructive strands of frayed belief

in honor, obligation, right and wrong.

My conscience lost, I cornered you in grief

and wild confusion.  Terrified but strong,

you pulled me up with awful honesty.

I grappled with the damning truth and fled,

then turned to face our common enemy,

the ruthless false informant who had led

me to betray my own allegiance, kept

in such a swirl of lies my judgment slept.

14

Beyond the simple recognition’s thrust,

that we had been deceived by someone else

who used our rivalry and fitful lust

to make us pawns to treachery, what wells

between us is a mythic wasteland’s gray

uncertain landscape – unhinged memories

thrown suddenly into stark new light sway

like hills adjusting to a map, their trees

crumpling under the motion of earth.

How can I reimagine you – or you,

me?  Nothing feels as real now as the girth

of you, that slender solid trunk I knew

both yesterday and today; my arms enfold

a form outside bare understanding’s hold.

15

Abruptly as our eyes met, we could tell

a common cause and competition lay

against the odds, with heady parallel

ambitions poised to bring our worst to play.

Nerves buckled with idealists’ pride, we forged

a sparring match of double-edged half-lies.

When duty’s bitter, faithless face informed

against  your sworn allegiance, deeper ties

knuckled down, refusing to snap – a love

already drunk on intimate deceit’s

high-wire revelation feints above

the hazard’s mist, our total twinned defeats.

A frenzy for the key half-truths hurled us

beyond the simple recognition’s thrust.