Hourglass in Service of the Sociopath's Wife
       

When the curtain opens, you see beneath the white hot spotlight:
him, submerged in a glass chamber full of water.

He is bound in a straightjacket and wrapped in chains
secured by brass locks. Beside the chamber,

an hourglass, its sand drifting downward, and me
crowned in a peacock-feathered headdress and sequins.

I am fingering a ring of keys, wearing a mannequin's smile.
This is what you have come to see. The spectacle. The dread.

If he escapes, what history! If he cannot—if the grains of sand
run out, if I must drain the chamber and unlock his chains—

you will think him a fraud. And so you watch, jaw tight,
hands clenched. He twists, wrestles, gently at first,

and you are confident in his practiced lungs, his dexterity,
his cunning. Soon, however, his struggle grows and you glance

between me and the hourglass, calculating the appropriate level
of concern. Still, I smile. The sand is quickening now

and I am smiling and he is thrashing against the water's weight.
Gasps rise like applause through the crowd, your eyes dart

between my teeth and his whitening face. The sand runs dry
and the keys spin aloof around my finger and still I smile.

He launches against the glass. And launches. And again. And then,
stops. The water ripples and curls, slows to a halt.

The room weighs an ocean. The keys spin. The audience sits
agape. My face, a betrayal of unbridled relief.

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Copyright © 2019 Jeanann Verlee All rights reserved
from prey
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission