Three FatesAuthor(s): Erica HuntSource: boundary 2, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1985 - Winter, 1986), p. 111Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303513 .

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Erica Hunt / THREE FATES

I was thinking that if the ceiling were mirrored we would have to watch what we say about what we feel. That we could not use curtains to conceal what we know. That we could watch without leaving the room or the chair. We could watch the sun take over or the sun pulled up short. Watch the hard stream of current event proceed in yanks and lurches.

We could eliminate the ritual of walking around ourselves: meet head on, relying on how pure coincidence transforms trial and error. And that we might even live in the same version of the same country speaking the same edition of the same language at the same time.

No more being thrown off beat. It must be love if while beside you I think of you and don't fall in.

I could throw away my hat, I need the target practice. We would get down to work. Work as the metaphor for the idea

we can touch: Fingers and thumb putting matter into fact, and cease being Sunday Sandinistas.

We could argue: get sprained on top of topic mountain and pass the whole night putting our shoulders to the planet.

We could remove the calvinist and other secret furniture from the language.

Except when the lights go off. Except when the paint comes off the walls. Except when the calm we've kept comes off in conversation. When they've eaten the last northerner and I'm the stranger in their midst. Or when the bricks in the aircraft we're flying in begin to migrate slowly apart. Except when the exits aren't marked and the busses have stopped running at this hour. When we believe we have no other choice than to run.

while motionless. daysnumbereddaysnumbered and borderless

Until we give up waiting for solutions that will never be given. Un- til balance is fulfilled by the barely contiguous unfamiliar. Until the tex- ture of rain is wet with visible points. Until the decay in language doesn't fix logic and enormous fuschia fruit grow among the patter. Until we enlist sense to illumination and make room for the blanks.

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