All the Women I Asked

By Lee Rossi

I didn’t know her, so I asked her to marry me. I did this many times. When I was twenty and still a virgin, I handed a girl a ring, Goethe’s words “The Eternal Feminine” inscribed inside. Of course, she was smarter than I was, and sold it to a jeweler. Whatever I bought her, she sold. And then in my thirties, still married, I asked a sleepy-lidded blonde. She left before I had time to wake. But I’m forgetting the red-haired ice dancer. And the romance novelist with curly hair. She wanted a child but had an abortion. It wasn’t my kid. I asked with my eyes, but she saw only rain streaking the windshield. I dropped her on the side of the road. Later she gave birth to a beautiful little girl, not her husband’s. Good thing. He used to read Mein Kampf during class. Then there was the grad student who cried in English and smiled in Spanish. I bought her a leather belt. She poured the wine of her tongue down my throat. It tasted like rain on a country road. In vino is all the veritas of the world. And the woman with a limp. She pretended not to hear. Or else, she didn’t hear, my voice like rags of wind flying past the window. Sotto the voce. Carping the diem. After forty, they never got older. I did, but not them. I was moving too quickly through the granary of life to notice mice bearing away the seed corn, the golden hill wearing away like light. I asked another to risk herself, almost inaudible above the roaring of time’s V-8. Each morning before I wake, another woman answers yes.

About the Author

Lee Rossi was born near the confluence of Greater Appalachia and the Deep South. During his lifetime the human population grew from two billion to eight and Carbon dioxide levels rose from less than 300 ppm to over 400. He believes in the laws of physics. His religion is kindness.