I
Dolores carves a decoy of herself
and leaves it in the hotel lobby.
Concealed behind a ficus tree, camouflaged
by forest green, she watches what befalls her.
Maybe being balsa wood is best.
With its fibrous hair, confused and offset face,
the decoy drips with paint. It’s an amazing likeness.
Dolores knows no better.
II
Most accidents happen within three miles of home,
so Joyce rarely leaves that range.
She’d like something unforeseen to happen.
She feels she needs the practice.
Joyce closes her eyes
and drives through stop signs.
She tries to sabotage her brakes,
but Joyce collides with no one.
Unintentionally, she remains unscathed.
On New Year’s, Joyce downs an extra scotch
and drives directly to a nearby checkpoint.
But the officer she wants
doesn’t want her. He fails to smell the liquor,
hear the sadness in her laughter.
Smiling, he lets her go.
III
When she returns home, Joyce sees Dolores’ decoy.
Who is that woman? she wonders,
drawn to her stillness, her silent resolve.
She touches the decoy’s shoulder. Then she steps away.
What could have gone wrong today didn’t.
But there’s still hope for Joyce.
Her elevator door might open like an advent calendar
on something unanticipated: a holiday
from safety—a holiday from life.
IV
Behind her ficus, Dolores watches Joyce,
her forthright walk, the purple of her party dress.
She wonders what it’s like to preen.
Maybe bravery is all bluff and believing it.
But Dolores fears the decoy’s prettier than she.
Who was that woman who touched her?
Maybe being balsa wood is best.
Why not begin a slow replacement?
Dolores could start with a balsa hat, followed
shortly by some balsa hair, and soon a balsa shoulder.
The hardest, of course, is the balsa heart.
V
Joyce dreams of her officer, his thick gloved hands.
He stops her from going too slowly. He stops her
from going too fast. He emerges
like a barracuda from his highway nook.
He follows her. The night becomes his ocean.
Some small barracuda swim in schools;
this larger one is solitary. She dreams he plunges
into her—her millions of tingling cilia—
their exquisite tension. She tells him to stop—
and he stops. So she wants him.
