dinner and drinks at the event horizon, by Megan Dobson

Soundsuit, 2018 Mixed media including buttons, wire, bugle beads, metal and mannequin 91 x 51 x 22 inches (approximately) © Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

dinner and drinks at the event horizon

I sat across the table, leaning in towards him,
staring into his eyes.
Enraptured, I felt myself sinking into them 
two dark, lustrous pools
and I imagined I could be happily lost in them forever.

I leaned back a bit, seeking more comfort,
and when I turned to him again
with just a bit of distance
it seemed as though the iridescent shadows were
no longer just in his dazzling eyes.
They seemed indeed to spill out from them,
the darkness still dazzling but now
slowly advancing across the table
towards me
like an encroaching mist. 

Startled and shaken,
I rose to my feet and took a step back.
And only then did I see him for what he was
for what he would be.
Those dark lustrous pools that had so enchanted me
were the heart of a black hole,
an endlessly hungry void that would steal my light,
and if I stayed, it would swallow me 
forever.

I drew back from the precipice and fled from the event horizon.
I never looked back.

If only all dangerous men came with such clear warning signs.

Megan Dobson

Megan Dobson is a teacher, a poet, and an unrepentantly queer hufflepunk making a home with her family on indigenous Tonkawan land in Austin, Texas. She has been published in the Poetry Marathon Anthologies for 2019, 2020, and 2021 and featured in Off Topic Publishing’s Poetry Box subscription. Pretty words are her jam.
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