The Falling Out
by Marjorie Stelmach

What happened to flesh --that unloveable block with the fat-voweled name, straight from the tongue of the cave we were first shaped to fit:

the Body,

remember?-- stubby all over, fingers so far from gesture it's odd to ponder the way they've grown so adept at the lighting of long, tapered candles; learned to slip into gloves; to cut with finesse a tarot deck.

What happened

to flesh? When did it first understand that it must stand still, behave, stop scratching, allow the grown-ups to talk?

At Aerobics, once,

the teacher lofted and held a full pound of fat, an ugly glob she'd bought from a butcher. That night we brought real passion to sit-ups.

Confronted with visual proof

of the starved Soul, sliced like a wedding ham and hung aloft for the light to pass--would we fall en masse to our knees?

When did the Soul fall out of flesh

into air and peer back at the Body: clearing its throat in disapproval; tapping its dissatisfaction with manicured nails on the hardwood of waxed dining tables;

quickening days

with something akin to desire, but dry and salted; lengthening nights with something like pain, but nowhere exactly?

When did we find for it

proper locations: behind the eyes; along the veins of the upper arms, not far from the heart; and yes, in the loins, but not that simple? When did we know we could never contain it?

When did we choose

to follow it off into exile, to follow it down all the ages, against all the odds; to live in its presence like madmen or stoics, to live with its absence like hollowed gods? And what will we do with the Soul at the end, when, buried too long, unloved, in the flesh, or banished too far from our thought, it begins to doubt itself, find itself wanting?

What of the day it suddenly thrusts

familiar, fat-syllabled names in our faces; damning our eyes, those dim, inadequate windows; shouting that soon it will bury us, banging its, what?...shoe? on the bargaining table; vowing to throw itself off a bridge or into a tawdry, shallow love.

When the Soul

stomps off on its own for ever, what will we do? Reconsider? Repent? Because, in the end, to hear the Soul tell it, it's all we've got, and by God,
we owe it.