Allison Field Bell

Windows Open to the Night

Sometimes I forget myself, stray
into a bar alone. Whiskey neat please.
And no, I don’t want to talk to you. No,
I am not married. See here? No band of metal
around my finger. Just this glass of liquid
gold in my fist. And yes, I am afraid
all the time. Coyote Joe’s at two am, and I know
he didn’t plan to follow me. I hit the pavement 

running—I always wear boots I can run in, I say
to whoever will listen. Never know when I have
to. The moon in its silver swagger there
at the horizon, casting everything death shade.
I’ve never shot a gun. Never want to. I don’t want
that cold heavy metal in my hand, that sound
of ruin in my ears. I just want what I can’t have:
a bar, a whiskey, my moonlit walk home alone. 

One story I remember: a man, a woman
fighting. The man leaves, walks the neighborhood
at night because he can. The woman paces
the backyard, counting steps between chicken coop,
mesquite tree, circling the small cholla. The story
ends with the man crying: he realizes she is trapped
in the yard and he is free to move through the world.
The two make love, windows open to the night. 

In the real story, the man doesn’t realize shit.
The fight lasts until morning. Until she takes
enough Xanax to fall asleep. And in the daylight,
he says, I’m hitting the restart button. That is his
apology. Hitting. And I stay with him for two more
years. In the end, it isn’t the man who follows me
home from the bar, it is the man who combs my hair
out in the shower.

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Allison Field Bell is originally from northern California but has spent most of her adult life in the desert. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Prose at the University of Utah and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. Her prose appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, New Orleans Review, West Branch, Epiphany, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Palette Poetry, South Dakota Review, Sugar House Review, The Greensboro Review, Nimrod International Journal and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.