Cattails and Regret

I grew up in Silver Marsh and almost didn’t leave. Not much to say about the place, except it’s flat as a griddle and thick with mud, a grave-deep clay with water brooding on top. I’ve still a lot of the wetlands in me and surely left half myself in those parts. I’d be living there now, on my family’s old swamp, instead of in these Pennsylvania woods, if it weren’t for Right-All Lymon. 

I’m a changed woman because of Right-All and not for the better. The rascal got ahold of me, and for one foolish year, I was lost, far off my noggin in love. What you see before you is what’s left, a mean soil that grows little but grief, my sadness, as wide as a cattail crop. A crying shame, in the literal sense. Wouldn’t recommend a year like that to my worst enemy, or second worst, I should say, seeing as Right-All is number one. I’d approve wretchedness aplenty for that bastard who deserves nothing less. 

Not that the year was bad—oh no. Too good, in fact, but a good with an expiration date, an ending that hurt like hell. For eleven months, Right-All was near perfect, impressive in all the little ways and, well, large. Could name any bird by its song and whistle the song, too. Plus, he could dance. A rarity, that: a big man who can dance. But he wasn’t only whistling to the chickadees. Wasn’t just dancing with me. I reckon I sensed his playing before I knew it, then pretended I didn’t long after that, till Right-All himself made it plain. Guess he needed me to know, so I’d be the one to call it quits. Wasn’t cowardice on his part so much as arrogance. He had his perfection to mind, and breaking my heart didn’t mesh. He probably still lets on I’m the ruthless one who ruined us, and goddammit, that fair chance burns me up.

Sometimes, late at night, when I’m rocking on my porch, in the company of the moths and bats, dipping deep in the mulekick, and hurting, hurting, a whole breeding ground of regret, I’ve a mind to head home and set the record straight, how the man don’t deserve his name, cheating scum that he is. Dancing, naturing, lovemaking, looking dangerous-good aside, Right-All is a regular rotter and, for me, for dead sure, All Wrong.