SUCKER PUNCH
The much younger player had been golf score cheating. The argument ended by a punch to your blind spot. Barese-Brooklynite whose only “A” in school had been in pugilism. The rare fall to your knees, even at 78 years of age, had been difficult to swallow.
Formidable presence belying your age, hard-nosed FBI agent retiree, a lifetime of handling things your way, had made your decision to press charges disappointing to me. I’m not sure why. You kept an unusually low-profile after the incident. You never talked about it. So, I never asked.
A month after you’d died in your sleep at 86, I found several Polaroid photos showing the left side of your face covered in a deep purplish-black. The images were shocking. You wouldn’t ever want anyone to see these. I trashed them.
Later that same day, while leafing through stacks of office notepads—you’d been a voluminous writer, I found a note in the middle of an otherwise pristine pad. A letter to a local judge in your microscopic penmanship. Sucker Puncher had apologized. You were withdrawing all charges.
You’d always written in longhand. Mom did all the typing.
AnnMarie Roselli is a writer and an artist living in Hudson Valley, New York. Her writing has appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Barren Magazine, Cagibi and others. Her artwork has been featured in The A3 Review, and has been exhibited in Emerge Gallery. She participates in poetry readings in Orange County, New York. Her collection of illustrated poetry Love of the Monster was published in 2016. Visit @anntogether.com
OVUNQUE SIAMO 