The Knockout Queen

by Rufi Thorpe

I would have asked her why she had invited me in, or why she had shown me around with the thoroughness of a realtor, except that I already knew, for her loneliness was so palpable as to be a taste in the air.

Not only was she not making jokes, she wasn’t laughing at the jokes of others. To me at the time, this was a heinous offense, a grievous wrong. What else were you supposed to do with pain but polish it until it became something pointy and pretty?

Why were we destined to be neurotic prey, trembling rabbits clamped between the hot jaws of larger, better, more vital animals?

Now I think I have assembled something, fragile and piecemeal as it is, that might be called understanding,

At root, I seemed to be upset about the existence of physical power at all. That violence is nothing but another kind of touching.

Why did we want so desperately to be seen? I saw her. My eyes were full of her. But it wasn’t enough, and I was no longer hurt by it. The way she loved me wasn’t enough for me either. Maybe love would never be enough. Maybe it would never do what we wanted it to do.

“Not a crybaby,” she said, “not a crybaby. But like…an artist that doesn’t make anything. You study yourself. You study life instead of living it. And everything you feel is like a fine wine and you sniff it and swish it around and in the end you barely fucking drink it.”